M/6/ 


•  DRAMATISTS 
OF    TO-DAY 


ROSTAND,   HAUPTMANN,    SUDERMANN, 
PINERO,  SHAW,  PHILLIPS, 
MAETERLINCK 

Being  an  Informal  Discussion  of  their 
Significant  Work 

BY 

EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE,  JR. 


OK  THE  ^ 

UNIVERSITY    11 


HENRY   HOLT   AND   COMPANY 
1905 


/m\/o 


Copyright,  1905 

BY 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Published  Afril,  tqos 


THE  MBRSHON  COMPANY  PRESS, 
RAHWAY,  N.  J. 


Mh(m 


Three  or  four  passages  in  the  following  pages 
appeared  originally  in  The  Dial,  which  used  to 
give  me  opportunities  to  write  on  these  matters, 
for  which  I  have  always  been  grateful.  I  have 
not  thought  it  necessary  to  break  the  continuity 
by  quotation  marks  or  acknowledgment.  Ulti- 
mately it  is  due  to  the  indulgent  kindness  of  the 
editor  of  The  Dial  that  these  papers  came  into 
being  at  all,  and  where  there  is  so  much  general 
obligation,  it  is  not  important  to  note  a  few  par- 
ticular paragraphs. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  witin  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


^v>^^^^ 


http://www.arcliive.org/details/dr'amatistsoftodaOOhalericli 


CONTENTS 

Paob 

A  Note  on  Standaeds  of  Criticism  •         .  1 

Rostand 12 

Hauptmann      .•••«.  37 

sudeemann        ••••••  62 

PiNEEO         .  .  •  .  .  •  .83 

Beenaed  Shaw 102 

Stephen  Phillips 126 

Maeteelinck    ...♦•.  147 

OuE  Idea  of  Teagedy       ....  176 

Appendix           ......  203 

Index        .         .         •         •         •         •         .  226 


A  NOTE  ON  STANDARDS  OF 
CRITICISM 

Of  old  a  "  Critick  "  studied  the  masters  In  any 
given  form  of  art  and  thus  learned  the  rules  of 
that  art.  He  might  then  consider  whatever  came 
to  his  notice  and  pronounce  It  good  or  bad.  We 
commonly  do  much  the  same  sort  of  thing  now, 
when  we  read  merely  for  fun.  We  have,  every 
one  of  us,  got  together,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, some  Ideas  on  what's  what  as  to  novels  or 
short  stories  or  plays  or  pictures,  and  when  we 
read  or  hear  or  see  anything,  we  Instinctively  form 
some  judgment  of  It  according  to  whatever  those 
ideas  may  be.  The  process  we  perhaps  express 
by  saying,  "  I  don't  pretend  to  know  anything 
about  criticism,  but  I  know  what  I  like."  Whether 
we  acknowledge  It  or  not,  we  commonly  form  our 
opinion  about  current  books  and  plays  on  some 
such  basis. 

This  mode  of  judgment,  still  popular  with  the 
general  reader,  was  abandoned  by  many  brilliant 
critics  some  time  ago.     It  seemed  foolish  to  com- 


2  STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM 

pare  indifferently  artists  of  all  countries  and 
ages,  to  call  Shakespeare  a  barbarian  because  he 
was  not  Sophocles,  or  Sophocles  an  old  grand- 
mother because  he  was  not  Shakespeare.  And 
with  the  growing  idea  of  natural  development  in 
every  line  of  human  interest  came  that  form  of 
criticism  which  seeks  to  explain  every  work  of  art 
by  the  circumstances,  which  views  it,  not  in  and 
by  itself,  but  in  its  coming  to  be.  The  idea  has 
taken  all  forms:  Herder  in  Germany,  Mme.  de 
Stael,  Chateaubriand,  Sainte-Beuve,  Taine  in 
France  developed  the  idea,  not  only  as  applied  to 
the  character  of  any  individual  artist,  but  as  the 
expression  of  the  spirit  of  national  life.  Morelli 
immensely  influenced  the  modem  criticism  of 
painting  by .  bringing  the  matter  down  to  the 
psychic  and  physical  habits  and  powers  of  any 
given  artist,  and  there  have  been  many  minor 
efforts  to  do  the  same  thing  in  literature.  The 
main  idea  is  in  all  cases  the  same :  the  work  of  art 
— picture,  poem,  play — is  the  result  of  certain 
forces;  if  you  would  rightly  understand  the  art, 
first  get  at  the  forces.  This  view  may  seem  to  be 
historical  or  scientific  rather  than  critical;  if 
everything  is  just  what  it  had  to  be  in  the  due 
course  of  nature,  can  we  call  one  thing  better  than 
another.^  Taine  was  extremely  ingenious  in  offer- 
ing an  answer  to  this  question. 


STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM  3 

The  world  was  getting  rather  accustomed  to 
this  Idea  when  it  was  called  upon  to  accept  an- 
other. Ruskin  proclaimed  that  art  was  a  teacher, 
and  drew  away  after  him  a  third  part  of  the  art- 
lovers  of  the  world  into  a  place  whence  it  has  been 
hard  to  escape.  In  time  it  appeared,  however, 
that  it  was  not  especially  necessary  that  art 
should  be  a  teacher :  the  significance  of  the  earlier 
criticism  of  Walter  Pater  lies  in  the  fact  that  he 
saw  that  art  was  a  power  working  upon  the  human 
spirit.  This  is  so  obviously  the  case — indeed 
Hazlitt  had  assumed  it  a  century  ago — that  it 
was  natural  that  the  idea  should  be  carried  to  its 
logical  conclusion  by  somebody.  Anatole  France 
presumably  came  upon  it  himself,  for  it  is  the 
most  natural  accompaniment  of  his  delightful 
effort  to  reduce  everything  to  0  =  0.  And  many 
others  have  used  the  idea  with  great  effect,  notably 
Mr.  Berenson,  who,  having  found  out  to  the  utter- 
most jot  and. tittle  how  Italian  art  came  into 
existence,  now  goes  on  and  tells  us  what  it  was 
and  has  been  to  the  world,  and  what  it  may  be 
to  us. 

The  drama  is  more  a  personal  than  a  theoret-       / 
ical  matter.     Every  one  goes  to  see  plays;  every 
one  is  in  some  way  or  other  affected  by  them.    In 
most  cases  the  effect  will  be  no  more  than  comes 
from  a  period  of  rest  to  a  spirit  wearied  by  the  rest- 


x 


4  STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM 

Jess  work  or  play  or  ennui  of  life  from  day  to  day* 
A  relaxation,  a  recess,  a  recreation;  such  is  the 
theatre  to  most.  But  even  as  such  it  must  be 
something  more.  If  this  man  always  does  one 
thing  and  that  man  does  something  else,  they  will 
certainly  differ  in  time.  If  one  man  commonly 
^oes  for  an  evening's  amusement  to  so-called 
vaudeville,  and  another  for  an  evening's  amuse- 
ment commonly  goes  to  see  Shakespeare  (suppos- 
ing he  had  the  chance),  there  will  surely  be  some 
difference  finally,  other  things  being  equal,  be- 
tween the  two.  The  theatre  is  too  powerful  a  stim- 
ulus for  any  spirit  at  all  sensitive  to  escape  it 
wholly.    Let  us  look  at  its  possible  effects. 

This,  at  least,  is  what  I  commonly  find  myself 
doing.  No  one  will  entirely  avoid  being  dogmatic 
or  descriptive;  no  one  will  avoid  some  thought  of 
environment  or  influence  or  development.  But  the 
main  thing  is  the  effect  upon  the  spirit.  I  shall 
not  of  course  emulate  the  example  of  Ruskin,  with 
his  notion  that  art  is  didactic  and  that  one  must 
become  as  a  little  child  at  the  feet  of  prophets, 
who  at  the  present  day  are  as  apt  to  resemble 
Hosea  as  Isaiah.  Nor  shall  I  follow  the  steps  of 
the  charming  arch-sceptic  of  our  time,  which  lead 
to  that  void  of  absolute  zero  in  which  his  spirit 
bathes  with  such  obvious  refreshment.  I  remain 
ou  an  isthmus  of  a  middle  state.    Somewhere  about 


STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM  5 

halfway  between  the  holy  mountain  and  the  abyss 
do  I  mount  beside  the  puppet  booth  and  give,  as 
though  a  barker,  some  comment  on  the  dramatists 
of  our  day. 

From  such  a  standpoint  no  one  will  expect 
broad  and  comprehensive  surveys;  the  real  pleas- 
ure and  stimulus  in  a  mountain  view,  say,  or  in- 
deed any  other  view,  does  not  consist  in  a  mastery 
of  all  the  details;  it  is  something  very  different. 
A  delightful  landscape  charms  one  at  the  moment 
and  makes  itself  thenceforward  an  influence  in  the 
mind,  so  that  one  is  happier  at  one  or  another 
moment  for  the  thinking  of  it.  So  it  is  with  other 
things  in  life,  and  especially  with  art;  one  is  im- 
mensely struck  by  a  picture,  it  may  be,  and  it 
remains  In  one's  thoughts  a  long,  long  time, 
having  part  in  all  sorts  of  unknown  psychoses; 
one  hears  music,  and  a  melody  or  a  phrase  stays  by 
one,  often  running  in  the  head  in  very  trivial 
fashion,  but  often  serving  finer  ends.  To  discern 
and  analyse  these  things  is  something  that  crit- 
icism has  hardly  tried  to  accomplish,  but  it  is  cer- 
tainly a  thing  to  be  done.  The  purists  always 
think  they  can  tell  you  what  correct  pronuncia- 
tion ought  to  be,  but  it  is  really  necessary,  first, 
to  know  what  everyday  pronunciation  is.  Before 
one  can  lay  down  the  law  as  to  how  one  ought  to 


6  STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM 

feel  about  a  drama,  it  is  but  reasonable  to  try  to 
find  out  how  one  really  does  feel. 

And  this  IS  somehow  not  a  very  easy  matter: 
it  would  seem  as  though  people  after  a  play  pre- 
ferred to  think  rather  than  feel.  It  is  not  very 
difficult  to  think  about  a  play  that  one  has  seen 
or  read,  and  that  may  be  the  reason  that  most 
people  do  so.  But  note  theatrical  criticism  and 
see  how  little  consists  of  impression,  save  in  the 
most  general  terms,  and  how  much  of  knowledge, 
opinion,  gossip.  It  is  true  that  one  must  have  a 
good  deal  in  the  way  of  facts  and  recollections; 
the  impressions  made  by  a  play  upon  a  mind  like 
Locke's  white  paper  will  not  be  of  much  interest 
in  a  complex  civilisation.  One  must  do  a  good 
deal  in  the  way  of  description  and  analysis  of 
character,  construction,  situation,  for  that  is 
often  the  only  way  that  one  can  present  one's  im- 
pressions, and  those  things  are  immensely  inter- 
esting and  valuable  for  themselves  or  in  relation 
to  other  criticism.  All  is,  they  are  not  the  main 
thing  here :  if  they  were,  I  should  have  to  apologise 
for  many  omissions  and,  I  suppose,  not  a  few  com- 
missions. No  one,  I  hope,  will  carp  at  my  neglect- 
ing academic  system  and  completeness.  I  have  so 
much  lecturing  on  literature  from  day  to  day,  so 
much  of  the  academic  way  of  looking  at  things, 
that  it  is  really  a  means  to  mental  health  to  do 


STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM  7 

something  else.  There  are  many  other  dramatists 
of  our  day  who  ought  to  have  their  part  In  any 
real  treatise  on  the  current  drama.  From  the 
ferocious  Strindberg  on  the  north  to  the  equally 
ferocious  d'Annunzio  on  the  south,  from  the  sym- 
bolic Mr.  Yeats  on  the  other  side  of  the  water 
to  our  own  Mr.  Clyde  Fitch,  whose  cymbals  tinkle 
rather  differently,  there  are  several  dramatists  as 
interesting  as  some  of  whom  I  speak.  And  then 
there  is  Ibsen;  no  one  can  neglect  him,  nor,  in- 
deed, have  I  done  so ;  for  although  Ibsen  is  not 
precisely  a  dramatist  of  our  day,  he  is  a  remark- 
able influence  on  the  drama  of  our  day.  To  us  in 
America  Ibsen  belongs  to  the  past  or  to  the  future, 
surely  not  to  the  present.  And  since  there  are  many 
books  and  essays  on  Ibsen,  I  have  thought  it  as  well 
not  to  attempt  any  new  estimate  of  his  work.  In 
fact  these  papers  make  no  attempt  at  a  complete 
and  systematic  view.  In  trying  to  form  such  a 
view  of  the  work  of  our  time,  much  of  the  freshness 
and  spontaneity  would  be  lost,  and  even  then  tne 
game  would  not  be  worth  the  candle,  for  in  a  few 
years  something  would  turn  up  that  would  make 
what  had  been  systematic  seem  very  desultory. 
Current  criticism  should,  I  suppose,  result  from 
something  pretty  definite  in  the  way  of  ideas,  but 
I  doubt  if  it  need  result  in  anything  definite  in  the 
way  of  system. 


8  STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM 

A  play  presents  its  material  to  us  in  a  concen- 
trated form  attained  by  certain  devices  which, 
though  literary  in  character,  are  usually  devel- 
oped from  the  necessities  of  the  stage  of  the 
period.  When  the  play  is  actually  presented  on 
the  stage,  its  effect  is  heightened  by  many  devices 
which  are  not  Kterary  in  character,  as  acting, 
stage-setting,  and  so  forth.  It  is  interesting  to 
note  these  devices,  these  ways  in  which  the  im- 
pression is  made  upon  us,  to  point  them  out,  to 
talk  of  them.  There  is  an  immense  amount  of 
very  interesting  stuff  here;  indeed,  it  makes  the 
greater  part  of  technical  dramatic  criticism.  But 
it  is  all  only  means  to  an  end ;  the  real  end  is  that 
we  ourselves  shall  be  affected  somehow  or  other 
by  the  play.  If  we  are  nowise  affected,  or  affected 
in  a  way  we  dislike,  we  might  as  well  stay  at  home ; 
or  if  we  are  at  home  reading  the  play,  we  might 
as  well  read  something  else  or  nothing  at  all.  Our 
interest  in  these  contemporary  dramatists  is  that 
we  get  something  from  them. 

This  something,  in  the  case  of  a  play  of  any 
value,  always  lasts  for  a  while,  perhaps  a  day  or 
two  only,  perhaps  merely  during  supper  after  the 
theatre,  but  generally  longer.  To  state  precisely 
the  general  nature  of  this  effect  in  simple  lan- 
guage is  not  at  all  feasy ;  I  do  not  know  that  it  has 
ever  been  very  systematically  analysed.     Neglect- 


STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM  9' 

ing,  however,  such  accidents  as  a  sweet  smile,  a 
phrase  of  music  or  of  words,  a  beautiful  dress,  we 
may  say  that  we  shall  usually  have  in  mind  a  bit 
of  human  experience.  This  experience  may  be,  in 
its  general  circumstance,  familiar  to  us,  as  in 
"  Candida,"  or  it  may  be  quite  unfamiliar  or  even 
impossible,  as  in  "  Die  versunkene  Glocke,"  but 
human  experience  it  is,  or  it  does  not  remain  long 
with  us. 

Just  what  we  do  with  this  new  possession  will; 
differ  according  as  we  differ,  but  the  main  things 
that  we  do  will  be  one  or  another  of  these  follow- 
ing. We  may  deal  with  it  as  we  should  with  any 
piece  of  real  life,  laugh  or  cry  over  it  at  the  time, 
think  about  it  and  talk  about  it  afterwards  as 
though  it  were  real.  How  was  it  with  Mrs.  Tan- 
queray.''  Was  it  right  or  wrong  that  the  world 
should  have  used  her  as  it  did?  Our  views  on 
these  matters  may  very  probably  be  influenced  by 
the  dramatist,  but  we  commonly  neglect  that  con- 
sideration and  think  and  talk  as  we  should  of  real 
people.  Or  next,  we  may  be  pleased  with  some- 
thing in  the  play  because,  though  not  real  life,  it 
is  such  an  absolute  resemblance  of  it.  Miss 
Prossy,  for  instance,  and  "  Prossy's  complaint " 
will  give  a  thrill  of  pleasure  because  they  so  per- 
fectly resemble  something  that  may  not  in  itself 
be  so  very  interesting  to  us*     It  is  very  fine,  we 


10  STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM 

say,  because  it  is  so  true.  Thirdly,  this  human 
experience  may  concentrate  itself,  as  it  were,  in  a 
figure  or  situation  that  will  appear  to  us  to  imply 
or  signify  something  of  importance,  which  figure 
or  situation  will  recur  to  the  mind  at  one  time  or 
another  with  a  good  deal  of  the  original  feeling 
with  which  we  first  experienced  it.  This  is  one 
reason  why  Mme.  Bernhardt  is  such  a  powerful 
ally  to  any  dramatist :  she  readily  makes  herself  a 
dramatic  figure. 

This  last  process,  I  rather  think,  is  the  most 
specifically  connected  with  the  drama.  The  first 
is  a  little  naive ;  it  reminds  one  of  the  many  stories 
about  inexperienced  persons  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury or  in  frontier  towns  or  early  in  life,  who 
thought  that  the  play  actually  was  real  life.  It 
is  something  which  has  no  especial  connection  with 
the  drama;  it  may  occur  well  enough  with  any 
form  of  representative  art  just  as  it  may  with  life 
itself.  The  second  is  a  great  pleasure  undoubt- 
edly; it  has  been  noted  by  many  an  analyst  be- 
/ore  and  after  Pope ;  still  it  gets  from  the  drama 
only  what  one  may  get  from  all  literature  and  all 
graphic  art  as  well.  The  last  seems  to  me  the 
pleasure  particularly  dramatic,  for  just  this 
result  the  drama  is  particularly  fitted  to  give  by 
all  its  especial  powers  and  devices,  and  to  quite 
the  same  degree  no  one  of  the  other  arts  can  give 


STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM  11 

it.  Something  of  the  kind  we  have  from  painting 
and  from  fiction  and  poetry,  but  the  drama  com- 
bines the  powers  of  the  two.  It  gives  us  figures 
for  the  eye  and  for  the  imagination  at  the  same 
time.  To  have  such  impressions  is  in  itself  an 
aesthetic  pleasure  of  the  purest  kind.  What  re- 
sults from  it  is  another  matter. 


ROSTAND 

When  M.  Edmond  Rostand  became  a  member 
of  the  French  Academy,  he  was  accepted  as  a  man 
of  letters  of  the  first  rank  by  a  body  which  has 
made  mistakes,  but  still  holds  the  respect  of  the 
world.  His  reception  was  therefore  an  event.  I 
read  that  even  from  the  outside  of  the  Palais  de 
I'lnstitut  one  could  "  measure  all  the  importance 
of  that  ceremony."  To  perform  that  feat,  my 
authority  continues,  it  was  enough,  at  least  for 
an  observer  well  up  in  his  "  Tout  Paris,"  to  see 
the  people  going  in  and  coming  out ;  the  different 
persons  of  importance  in  "  les  mondes  litteraire, 
artistique,  scientifique,  aristocratique,  diploma- 
tique," who  formed  groups  "  d'un  charactere  sug- 
gestif  et  d'un  interet  documentaire."  Not  being 
very  strong  myself  in  "  Tout  Paris,"  I  must  con- 
fess that  the  only  one  of  these  groups  presented  by 
rillustration  that  was  of  real  interest  to  me  was 
that  consisting  of  M.  Rostand  himself  iQ  a  cocked 
hat  and  a  cloak,  with  a  sword  sticking  from  under 
it,  preceded  by  an  usher.  And  from  a  considera- 
tion of  the  other  groups,  I  incline  to  think  that  the 

12 


ROSTAND  Xa 

importance  of  the  occasion  may  be  measured,  per- 
haps, but  not  fully  estimated,  by  a  consideration 
of  the  persons  who  were  present  at  it,  although  it 
is  of  interest  to  be  told  that  there  were  more  guests 
than  there  have  been  at  any  such  occasion  in  the 
last  half-century. 

In  fact  various  writers  have  estimated  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  event  in  a  totally  different  manner. 
They  have  considered  it  as  bringing  forward  the 
question  of  M.  Rostand's  position  from  the  stand- 
point of  literature. 

From  the  standpoint  of  literature  it  will  be  ob- 
served, rather  than  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
theatre.  For  it  seems  obvious  that  a  man  need 
not  have  any  position  in  literature  by  virtue  of 
theatrical  masterpieces  alone.  Other  positions  he 
will  have  thereby,  but  not  a  position  in  literature ; 
for  that  one  must  produce  books  that  people  will 
read.  Literature  is  a  matter  of  letters  rather 
than  of  sounds,  one  may  say.  A  man  may  be  a 
great  talker,  but  only  rarely  does  one  gain  a  place 
in  literature  by  conversation  alone;  Bos  wells  are 
too  rare.  One  may  be  a  great  orator,  but  even 
so,  one  is  known  in  literature  by  the  printed  form, 
as  when  Macaulay  wrote  out  his  speeches,  ten  and 
twenty  years  after  he  made  them,  not  in  the  pre- 
cise words  he  had  used,  which  were  irrevocably  lost, 
but  in  words  which  he  might  have  used.     So  with 


14  ROSTAND 

the  dramatist.  If  his  work  have  anything  of 
Kterature  in  it,  it  will  be  something  that  will  stand 
the  test  of  type. 

The  theatre,  undoubtedly,  produces  often  mat- 
ters that  are  most  delightful  when  put  in  book 
form,  but  the  theatre,  as  such,  is  not  concerned 
in  that  fact.  Of  the  innumerable  forms  of  the 
drama,  many  have  Kttle  about  them  that  can  be 
called  literature, — melodrama  and  farce,  as  a  rule, 
the  clever  extempore  drama  of  Italy  and  other 
lands,  the  pantomime  which  often  has  a  strikingly 
dramatic  quality  without  a  single  word,  and,  we 
may  add,  the  now  extinct  Weber  and  Fields  bur- 
lesque, which  seems  to  have  been  a  theatrical  genre 
of  great  interest  to  the  student  of  the  stage,  in  its 
possibilities  at  least. 

This  matter  is  clear  enough  to  the  keen-eyed 
critics  of  M.  Rostand's  own  country.  They  looked 
upon  his  reception  into  the  Academy  with  interest, 
because,  as  they  said,  although  he  had  dominated 
the  purely  theatrical  criticism,  he  had  not,  up  to 
that  time,  wholly  won  over  the  critics  of  literature. 
"  If  the  people  of  the  theatre  can  hardly  speak  of 
M.  Rostand  without  a  sort  of  amorous  emotion  in 
the  voice,  literary  people  have  been  able,  on  the 
contrary,  to  make  him  the  subject  of  a  more  un- 
moved criticism."  Such  at  least  was  the  view  of  M. 
Gustave   Kahn,    who    went    on    to    consider    "  la 


ROSTAND  15 

valeur  Utteraire "   of  the  author  of  "  Cyrano " 
and  "  L'Aiglon." 

I  must  leave  M.  Kahn  to  his  own  opinions,  for 
it  is  surely  none  of  my  business  to  controvert  or 
agree  with  the  ideas  of  a  French  critic  on  the 
position  in  French  literature  of  a  French  drama- 
tist. But  the  point  is  noteworthy  in  this  way :  M. 
Rostand  had  a  great  success,  out  of  France  at 
least,  for  reasons  that  were  somewhat  non-theat- 
rical, or  that  were  at  least  supposed  to  be.  In 
Germany  the  critics,  at  least,  laid  stress  upon  his 
ideas  and  in  this  country  something  of  the  sort  was 
the  case.  Not  that  it  was  not  delightful  to  see  his . 
plays  at  the  theatre;  not  that,  had  he  presented 
his  ideas  in  other  forms,  they  would  have  been  as 
successful  as  they  were;  neither  of  these  supposi- 
tions is  the  case.  But  given  the  theatrical  success 
of  M.  Rostand,  a  thing  that  he  possessed  in  com- 
mon, for  instance,  with  Mr.  Clyde  Fitch  or  Mr. 
David  Belasco,  that  which  was  the  staying  quality, 
outside  of  France  at  least,  was  the  literature  and 
not  the  extreme  theatrical  skill. 

Of  course  many  of  those  most  ready  or  compe- 
tent to  speak  on  this  subject  are  of  a  very  different 
opinion.  But  what  will  you  have  ?  A  man  cannot 
be  always  thinking  like  other  people,  he  must  wan- 
der off  by  himself  sometimes.  And  if,  in  such  wan- 
derings, his  views  are  false  or  foolish,  the  best 


16  ROSTAND 

thing  to  do  is  to  speak  tHem  out,  for  then  he  will 
be  corrected  by  those  who  are  wiser.  So  I  offer 
my  view  of  the  literary  element  and  quality  in  the 
work  of  M.  Rostand  with  perfect  cheerfulness, 
even  though  it  is  very  different  from  that  of — ^well, 
various  people  of  consideration.  And  there  is  cer- 
tainly pleasure  in  looking  over  the  work  of  M.  Ros- 
tand, as  though  he  were  not  a  successful  play- 
wright who  maybe  seen  (let  us  hope,  again)  at  the 
theatre,  presented  by  the  most  charming  or  the 
most  dominating  of  the  actresses  of  the  day,  but 
rather — what  shall  I  say? — rather  as  though  he 
were  one  of  the  great  dramatists  of  the  literature 
of  the  past,  whose  work  is  now  withdrawn  from 
the  glare  of  the  footlights  and  enclosed  silently 
between  covers,  for  the  delight,  not  of  the  ground- 
ling or  the  man  from  the  street,  but  of  the  pale 
student  under  the  midnight  bulb  or  the  member  of 
a  popular  literary  club. 

In  M.  Rostand's  first  work  for  the  stage,  "  Les 
Romanesques,"  he  was  surely  attractive,  but  not 
very  much  more.  A  writer  who  thinks  that  in  that 
charming  little  play  we  have  M.  Rostand  "  tout 
entier,  ou  il  est  le  meilleur,  dans  la  picaresque 
et  la  funambulesque,"  seems  to  miss  so  much 
suggested  by  the  later  plays  that  one  is  tempted 
to  ask:  Is  it  really  there,  all  this  that  we  think 
moves  us.'^    or  can  it  be  that  we  are  reading  into 


ROSTAND  17 

the  work  of  the  poet  ideas  which  were  nothing  to 
him  and  thereby  neglecting  the  very  things  that 
were  in  his  own  mind  the  real  ones?  Yet  I  shall 
for  the  moment  believe  that  it  is  not  so,  and  go  on 
to  say  that  "  Les  Romanesques  '*  is  not  what  might 
be  expected  of  the  author  of  "  Cyrano  de  Berge- 
rac."  Not  because  it  is  slight,  nor  because  it  is 
little  more  than  attractive,  but_because  it  is  a  deli- 
cate  satire  upon  the  tribe  of  romaacers  In  general. 
Percinet  and  Sylvette,  two  young  people  who  live 
on  estates  separated  by  a  high  wall,  are  full  of  a 
fine  desire  for  colour,  and  beauty,  and  charm.  They 
long  for  a  wonderful  life  and  condemn  the  com- 
monplace. Their  fathers  appreciate  their  dispo- 
sition, too,  and,  not  unwilling  to  pose  a  bit  them- 
selves, they  affect  to  be  bitter  enemies.  The  lovers 
are  transported  into  the  seventh  heaven  and  be- 
come Romeo  and  Juliet.  How  can  they  be  united? 
They  suggest  ridiculously  impossible  plans,  and 
then  their  fathers  humour  them  with  a  scheme  of 
their  own.  It  is  delightful  while  they  think  it 
genuine,  but  when  they  find  out  that  they  have  been 
tricked  they  are  enraged.  Sylvette  refuses  to  be 
married  and  Percinet  goes  forth  to  seek  for  adven- 
ture in  the  world.  Of  course  he  returns  and  the 
play  ends  happily,  as  the  saying  is. 

M.  Rostand's  great  triumph  was  in  romance. 
Is  it  to  be  said  that  to  begin  with  a  burlesque  on 


18  ROSTAND 

romance  and  to  succeed  with  a  romantic  triumph 
shows  a  lack  of  sincerity  ? 

That  is  not  just  the  way  to  put  it.  Men  do  not 
often  jest  at  what  they  deem  great.  But  they  do 
jest  (and  often  very  bitterly,  as  Rostand  does 
not)  at  the  world's  perversions  of  what  they  deem 
great. .  Rostand  believes  in  romance,  let  us  say, 
but  he  has  his  laugh  at  the  romancers.  Did  not 
Sir  Walter  make  fun  of  Julia  Mannering? 

These  charming  lovers  are  doubtless  silly;  they 
think  they  must  have  exquisite  mystery,  recondite 
sensation,  something  strange,  out-of-the-way,  fas- 
cinating, anything  in  short  that  they  have  not 
got.  But  so  it  is  also  with  their  everyday  fathers : 
they  also  think  they  will  be  satisfied  with  what 
they  have  not,  but  when  they  have  it,  Pasquinot  is 
bored  at  Bergamin's  watering  pot,  and  Bergamin 
is  bored  at  Pasquinot's  always  having  a  button  off 
his  waistcoat.  Youth  is  one  thing,  age  is  another, 
but  both,  in  so  far  as  they  substitute  dreams  for 
reality,  are  fair  food  for  wit. 

But  what  is  reality  ?  And  here  Percinet  speaks 
possibly  for  M.  Rostand. 

**  It  was  real  for  us  who  thought  it  real. 

Sylvette.  No.  My  being  carried  off,  like  your 
duel,  was  all  made-up. 

Percinet.  Your  fear  was  not,  madame.'* 

The  mind  that  is  sincere  makes  the  reality,  but 


/ 


people  are  too  ready  with  the  conventional  com- 
monplace  as  with  the  conventional  romance.  Ro-. 
mance  itself  may  be  real  enough  if  it  only  be  real 
romance  and  not  the  conventional,  the  make-believe, 
the  fashionable.  Percinet  on  the  road,  Sylvette  in 
the  garden,  learn  that  life  is  not  made  up  of. 
phrases  and  attitudes. 

This  was  the  jj^ff  ^-hftt  ^^^  "Rpah'stg  and  the 
Naturalists  and  the  rest  had  always  had  in  mi^  j. 
They  had  laughed  at  the  old  romance  and  its  cos- 
tumes and  properties,  its  phrases  and  attitudes. 
They  themselves  presented  truth. 

So  would  Rostand,  only  he  would  present  truth 
differently:  the  realists  presented  truth  by  its 
ever-varying  myriad  circumstance^,  he  would  pre- 
sent it  by  its  essence,  its  idea,  its  type.  Hence 
"  La  Princesse  Lointaine." 

In  "  La  Princesse  Lointaine  "  we  have  the  ideal- 
ist, the  ultra-romantic  Rudel,  faithful  to  the 
very  door  of  death  to  the  Princess  whom  he  has 
never  seen.  But  we  also  have  the  Princess,  too, 
and  she  is  not  faithful.  She  fondles  the  idea  of 
an  absent  lover  devoted  to  her  image,  and  when  she 
hears  from  the  redoubtable  Bertrand  that  her 
lover  is  at  hand  sick  to  death,  awaiting  her  on  his 
mattress  laid  on  deck,  she  will  not  go  to  him.  And 
why?  The  subtle  Sorismonde  suggests  a  reason. 
"  You  will  not  see  him  who  was  dear  to  you  in  the- 


^0  ROSTAND 

divine  splendour  of  a  dream,  because  you  would 
not  see  him  in  the  horrible  haggardness  of  the  fact ; 
you  would  keep  the  recollection  of  your  love  still 
noble." 

"  Ah,  yes ! "  says  the  Princess,  "  that  is  the 
only  reason." 

But  it  is  not  really  the  contrast  of  the  vision- 
ary love  and  the  haggard  fact  that  moves  her. 
It  is  the  contrast  between  the  imaginary  love  and 
the  actuality  of  the  passion  that  she  feels  for  the 
messenger.-  Sorismonde  tells  her  that  she  passes 
from  a  dream  into  real  life.  She  says  herself  that 
she  denies  the  pale  flower  of  the  dream  for  the 
flower  of  love.  But  when  the  experiment  is  made 
it  appears  that  the  flower  of  love,  that  the  actual- 
ity of  life,  has  been  bought  at  too  high  a  price, 
that  there  was  something  even  more  real  in  the  im- 
agination, in  the  dream,  in  the  romance.  Squar- 
ciafico  cannot  understand  such  a  thing  when  it 
occurs  in  his  own  humorous  accompaniment  to 
the  lyric  motive.  He  grasps  it  no  better  than  the 
average  realist.  "  But  I  am  opening  your  eyes !  " 
he  says  to  the  sailors.  "  And  suppose  we  prefer 
to  keep  them  closed?  "  they  say  in  their  blundering 
faith,  not  diff^ering  much  from  many  readers  of 
Zola.  It  is  only  when  she  has  given  up  the  passion 
of  actuality,  and  returned  to  the  old  ideal  that  she 
believed  in,  that  Melissande  finds  herself  on  firm 


ROSTAND  n 

ground.  At  the  end  she  knows  the  one  thing 
needful. 

"  La  Princesse  Lointaine  '*  was  not  successful 
upon  the  stage,  I  believe,  and  it  is  not  wholly  con- 
vincing here  and  there  when  one  reads  it.  That 
goes  rather  without  saying.  Had  it  been  a  first- 
rate  play,  M.  Rostand  would  have  been  famous  be- 
fore "  Cyrano."  There  is  much  that  is  beautiful 
in  "  La  Princesse  Lointaine."  The  indomitable 
hero,  the  faithful  sailors,  the  audacious  quest,  the 
intensity  of  the  moment  of  action,  and  a  very  ex- 
quisite reconciliation  to  the  tragic  end  remain  in 
one's  mind  and  may  well  outweigh  a  lightness  and 
over-refinement  of  handling.  At  least  one  is  im- 
pressed with  the  feeling  that  here  is  one  who  can 
say  his  word  on  the  deep  things  of  life  and  give 
his  imagining  the  form  of  beauty.  And  here  is  a 
word  spoken  with  no  uncertain  voice  for  the  power 
of  romance. 

As  to  "  La  Samaritaine,"  that  is  certainly  a 
matter  rather  hard  for  the  average  Anglo-Saxon 
to  handle.  It  is  hard  to  understand  the  mental 
attitude  which  conceived  the  play.  It  is  of  course 
not  the  simplicity  which  presented  much  the  same 
thing  five  centuries  before,  in  the  mystery  plays. 
But  then  it  is  hardly  the  balmy  scepticism  with 
which  another  Frenchman,  some  time  since,  offered 
the  world  a  Galilean  idyl  in  exchange   for  an 


22  ROSTAND 

inspired  Gospel.  However  we  take  it,  though^ 
we  have  a  play  made  from  an  episode  in  the  career 
of  the  greatest  idealist  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
To  my  ears,  however,  all  that  rings  true  in  the 
play  is  that  which  reminds  me  of  words  otherwise 
long  familiar.  The  play  was  not  unsuccessful,  but 
excited  no  great  interest. 

It  was  at  the  very  end  of  the  year  1897  that 
"  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  "  was  produced  and  at  once 
achieved  an  immense  success  in  Paris,  and  not  very 
long  after,  throughout  Europe  and  America.  It 
was  a  great  day  for  Romance,  a  second  "  Her- 
nani.'^ 

In  the  history  of  the  literature  of  the  nineteenth 
century  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  will  be  a  well-remem- 
bered figure — would  be  something  much  more  than 
that,  except  that  people  do  not  read  plays  as  much 
as  they  read  novels.  But  even  as  it  is,  Cyrano  de 
Bergerac  is,  and  will  remain,  one  of  the  great 
figures  which  the  French  literature  of  our  time 
offers  the  world.  As  we  look  back,  any  one  of  us, 
into  the  vista  of  our  earlier  days,  and  recognise 
the  figures  that  arise  from  the  readings  of  our 
youth,  the  first  to  strike  us,  when  we  think  of  our 
early  acquaintance  with  French  literature,  is  the 
/figure  of  the  heroic  d'Artagnan.  Or  is  it  Con- 
suelo.'^  Never  mind — the  elder  Dumas  and  Greorge 
Sand  were  the  great  French  writers  of  our  earlier 


ROSTAND  23 

days,  as  they  were  of  an  earlier  part  of  the  cen- 
tury. It  must  have  been  later  in  life  that  we  be- 
came acquainted  with  the  Comedie  Humaine  and 
Marguerite  Gautier,  with  Madame  Bovary  and  the 
Rougon-Macquart  family.  Whether  it  were  so  or 
not  in  our  own  individual  youth,  it  was  practically 
so  with  the  youth  of  our  time.  To  readers  nour- 
ished on  Byron  and  Scott,  France  gave  the  "  Three 
Musketeers  "  and  "  Monte  Cristo,"  "  Mauprat '' 
and  "  Consuelo."  Then  came  the  turn  of  the  tide, 
and  a  generation  brought  up  on  Dickens  and 
Thackeray  and  George  Eliot  put  aside  childish 
things  and  were  thrilled  by  the  tragedies  of  Bal- 
zac, Dumas  fils,  Flaubert,  Zola,  Of  course  there 
were  other  realists,  too, — realists  everywhere, — 
but  these  were  the  men  who  represented  France, 
and  who  created  the  typical  characters  that  seize 
the  imagination  and  recollection  of  all. 

Then,  as  the  century  was  coming  to  an  end, 
France  presented  another  figure, — and  that  not 
realistic,  but  romantic  again, — presented  it  to  a 
world  that  was  ready  to  enjoy  romance  once  more. 
Just  as  a  generation  fed  on  Scott  welcomed 
d'Artagnan,  so  a  generation  fed  on  Stevenson 
welcomed  Cyrano  de  Bergerac.  The  pendulum 
had  swung  back. 

When,  after  the  duel  in  the  first  act,  a  brilliant 
and  heroic  musketeer  strides  out  of  the  crowd  and 


M  ROSTAND 

shakes  the  victorious  Cyrano  by  the  hand  and  dis- 
appears, the  incident  is  more  significant  than  the 
audience  appreciates.  "  Who  is  that  gentle- 
man ? "  says  Cyrano  to  Cuigy .  "  It  is  M. 
d'Artagnan,"  says  he,  and  Cyrano  turns  round; 
but  the  older  hero  is  gone,  and  Cyrano  holds  the 
attention  alone.  The  two  are  alike  and  are  dif- 
ferent. Both  are  heroes  who  fire  the  old-time 
savage  element  of  the  soul, — Gascons,  swordsmen, 
indomitable,  men  of  the  compelling  word  and  the 
convincing  stroke,  hot-blooded,  honourable,  heroic. 
But  there  is  also  a  difference:  one  is  striking, 
brilliant,  magnificent,  and  the  other  is  almost 
-4zrotesque.  He  is  cruelly  grotesque;  there  is 
nothing  to  lighten  it;  it  is  nothing  one  can  pity, 
like  a  hump  or  a  club-foot;  nothing  one  can 
delude  oneself  into  thinking  fine,  like  a  mountain 
belly  and  a  rocky  face  or  a  Rochester*  sort  of 
hideousness;  nothing  that  one  can  fancy  is  sig- 
nificant, like  a  birthmark  or  a  distorted  mouth. 
All  these  things  the  world  would  forgive  or  for- 
get. Here  is  something  ridiculous,  something 
that  would  make  any  of  us  shiver  and  writhe  if 
we  saw  it  by  our  fireside.  Here  is  something  that 
touches  us  cynical,  susceptible,  bantering  people^ 
touches  us  in  a  very  tender  place. 

And  yet  one  swallows  it,  and  with  it  all  minor 
matters.    Cyrano  might,  by  an  enemy,  be  called  a 


ROSTAND  25 

bully  and  a  braggart,  but  that  possibility  is 
quite  lost  in  our  general  sympathy.  We  do  not 
think  of  that  any  more  than  of  his  nose;  we  feel 
only  that  he  is  a  noble  figure..  This  is  rather  a 
curious  thing.  It  is  the  result  of  Realism^  I  take 
it.  In  the  old,  old  fairy  tale,  the  beast  stopped 
being  a  beast  when  he  was  loved.  The  monster 
became  Cupid.  But  Realism  pricked  that  bubble, 
and  we  recognise  to-day  even  in  literature,  as  a 
rule,  that  human  nature  is,  and  will  long  continue 
to  remain  human,  '^f^  ^U8t  accept  the  strange 
mixture  of  the  god  and  the  animah.  We  must  rec- 
ognise that  the  old-time  dreams  are  dreams — 
beautiful,  encouraging,  inspiring,  to  be  remem- 
bered and  to  be  thankful  for,  but  not  truths  that 
we  shall  ever  know.  Realism  fixed  upon  us  the 
pre-eminent  thought  of  our  time  that  the  triumph 
of  the:^.  spirit  is  d^ffpit^  fKa^flp-gk.,  and  the  new 
Romanticism  profited  by  the  lesson.  Our  English 
romancers — Mr.  Stanley  Weyman  is  a  good  exam- 
ple of  a  hundred — did  not  quite  dare.  They  were 
conscious  that  their  heroes  must  not  be  the  old-time 
impossibilities,  but  they  compromised,  as  a  rule, 
by  having  their  heroes  chumps,  stupid  though 
well-meaning,  and  of  course  successful  at  the  end. 
They  did  not  dare  to  go  to  the  impossible  extreme 
which  so  often  makes  the  type.  M.  Rostand  did 
dare  to  do  so,  and  succeeded. 


^  ROSTAND 

Is  it  a  curious  thing  this  swinging  over  to  Ro- 
mance? We  used  to  think  that  romance  was  some- 
thing for  children.  They  read  about  d'Artagnan 
fighting  duels  or  Ivanhoe  in  the  tournaments,  while 
their  elders  read  (aloud)  Anthony  TroUope's  ac- 
counts of  everyday  life  reaching  the  culmination  of 
excitement  in  a  rattling  fox-hunt.  And  then  sud- 
denly we  found  that  the  tide  had  turned.  Not  sud- 
denly, perhaps,  for  long  ago  I  remember  my  in- 
ivard  wonder  when  a  man  whose  taste  I  esteemed 
told  me  of  his  joy  in  "  King  Solomon's  Mines.'* 
No,  it  was  not  sudden,  for  no  change  in  taste  is  sud- 
den, but  it  was  sure  nevertheless,  so  that  it  is  per- 
haps not  the  less  curious. 

Still  we  may  ask,  Is  the  new  Romance  the  same 
as  the  old?  Is  Scott  the  same  as  Stevenson?  Is 
'**  Cyrano  "  the  same  as  "  Hernani ''  ? 

Certainly  Stevenson  is  not  Scott.  He  is  not  so 
large  a  man  for  one  thing,  but  for  another  he  is 
not  of  the  same  kind.  So  far  as  real  life  is  con- 
cerned there  is  no  comparison,  Scott  is  the  only 
one  to  think  of.  But  so  far  as  romance  is  con- 
cerned, there  is  little  enough  comparison  either. 
Incomplete  as  Stevenson  is,  powerless  often  to  ex- 
press his  own  convictions,  he  never  tried  to  present 
figures  as  empty  of  real  significance  as  the  Master 
of  Ravenswood  and  the  Disinherited  Knight.  He 
sought  for  the  romance  of  the  spirit  and  not  for 


ROSTAND  27 

the  external  romance  of  costume  and  circumstance 
that  satisfied  Scott.  In  fact,  Realism  has  had  its 
effect,  for  it  has  made  people  more  serious. 

Cyrano  is  surely  a  character  for  the  playwright. 
"  Mais  quel  geste,"  he  says.  It  surely  was  a  good 
attitude, — ^just  why  who  can  divine? — that  throw- 
ing the  bag  of  crowns  on  the  stage.  Nor  was  Cy- 
rano ever  at  a  loss  for  such  attitudes.  He  is  quite 
without  affectation  when  he  sets  forth  to  march 
through  Old  Paris  at  the  head  of  that  strange 
procession  of  musicians  and  soldiers  and  ac- 
tresses, as  well  as  when  the  Spanish  officer  asks: 
"  Who  are  these  so  determined  on  death?  "  he 
replies :  "  Ce  sont  les  cadets  de  Gascogne ! "  and 
charges  the  crowd  of  Imperialists  with  the  few 
that  are  left. 

Such  things  are  characteristic  of  him.  He  must 
do  them.  We  cold-blooded  creatures  do  not  un- 
derstand such  things.  They  seem  perhaps  sense- 
less to  us  and  foolhardy,  we  do  not  know  what 
they  mean.  This  melodramatic  character  thrills 
us  perhaps,  but  we  cannot  sympathise  because  we 
cannot  interpret.  To  us  Cyrano  is  an  actor,  and 
we  Anglo-Saxons  are  not  individually  apt  to  act, 
nor  to  respect  the  actor  as  such.  So  we  miss  one 
side  of  the  fnan,  one  of  his  perfectly  natural  means 
of  expressing  himself. 

Only  this  one  side,  however,  need  we  miss,  if  that 


^ 


28  ROSTAND 

to  some  degree.  For  this  dramatic  expression  so 
natural  to  Cyrano,  as  I  suppose  to  all  French  and 
many  more,  is  but  one  side  of  the  character.  It  is 
a  mode  of  expression  for  certain  things,  but  not 
for  everything.  There  are  things  about  Cyrano 
that  do  not  come  to  such  expression. 

We  Anglo-Saxons  want  ideas  or  we  think  we  do. 
All  else  we  put  aside  as  being  superficial,  insincere, 
and  so  miss  the  greater  part  of  the  dramatic  spirit 
of  the  Latin.  But  Cyrano  has  his  ideas,  too,  as 
well  as  his  poses.  He  is  less  conscious  of  them 
perhaps,  but  he  has  them,  or  rather,  as  we  should 
say  of  his  poses,  he  is  them. 

Cyrano  is  in  fact  a  type — a  type  of  the  largest 
class  of  people  in  the  world  (for  it  includes  every 
one),  namely  those  who  do  not  get  what  they  know 
they  deserve,  who  find  no  chance  to  do  what  they 
know  they  could  do,  who  are  so  much  greater  to 
themselves  than  to  the  cold  world.  He  is  also  the 
type  of  a  much  smaller  class  who  do  not  make  a 
fuss  about  the  matter,  but  carry  it  all  off  so  gaily 
and  finely  that  no  one  has  any  consciousness  of  com- 
plaint, murmuring,  repining ;  indeed  perhaps  there 
is  at  bottom  hardly  a  suspicion  of  anything  of  the 
kind.  From  the  girl  who  is  not  like  other  girls, 
from  that  strange  commercial  traveller  some  years 
ago  who  published  poems  that  his  friends  might 
know  his  real  self,  to  the  philosopher  with  his  "  To 


ROSTAND  29 

be  great  Is  to  be  misunderstood,"  or  to  the  professor 
who  fretted  and  fumed  and  lamented,  and  tor- 
mented himself  "  because,  as  he  acknowledged  to 
himself,  the  Thou  sweet  gentleman  was  not  suffi- 
ciently honoured,"  to  the  great  Queen  exclaiming: 
"  If  my  people  only  knew  me  as  I  am  1 "  we  all 
nurse  an  ideal  in  our  hearts  and  most  of  us  know 
that  it  will  never  be  reahsed,  even  that  it  cannot  be 
realised.  For  one  reason  or  another,  doubtless, 
not  always  a  nose, — perhaps  even  it  is  the  neces 
sary  nature  of  things,  though  that  is  rarely 
view  that  we  take  of  it. 

And  so  Cyrano  takes  our  sympathy.  We  are 
even  as  he.  With  him  it  is  a  nose,  with  us  fortu- 
nately a  something  else,  that  prevents~»our  Sitand- 
ing  forth_tojhe^wod[ifor^^a^^^^^  This, 

besides  many  minor  matters,  good  each  in  its  own 
way,  is  the  thing  that  unconsciously  touches  all. 

Yet,  because  M.  Rostand  is  not  Shakespeare  or 
some  one  like  him,  we  do  not  have  everything. 
Some  would  say  because  he  is  a  Frenchman, 
decadent,  pessimist,  morbid,  he  has  nothing  more 
to  say  than  just  that.  Here  is  a  man  who  was 
fine,  strong,  brave,  good,  and  never  got  his  due. 
What  of  it?  Well,  the  rest  is  silence,  or  nearly 
so.  The  last  act  is  pathetic,  touching,  but  not 
illuminating.  Certainly  Roxane  did  not  love  him, 
— or  suppose  she  did,  what   of  it.?    He  had  no 


so  ROSTAND 

comprehension  of  It.  And  suppose  he  had  had, 
what  then?  Would  that  have  been  what  we  feel 
the  true,  the  inevitable  end?     I  fear  not. 

Still  it  is  a  beautiful  play.  To-night,  seven 
years  after  I  read  it  first  and  saw  it  on  the  stage, 
I  read  it  once  more,  and  that  with  some  misgiving. 
But  the  beautiful  verse  has  lost  none  of  its  beauty ; 
the  gaiety  and  verve  and  spirit  have  lost  none  of 
their  lightness;  the  situations  have  lost  no  thrill; 
and  the  play  has  much  the  same  meaning  as  that 
first  night  when  I  read  it,  and  it  pursued  itself 
through  my  mind  till  morning, — as  much  and 
more. 

When  a  man  does  something  very  fine  indeed 
he  may  well  fear — or  at  least  his  friends  may 
fear  for  him — that  he  will  not  be  able  to  do  some- 
thing else  worthy  of  being  compared  with  it. 
Until  we  get  used  to  it,  genius  so  often  seems  acci- 
dent. There  must  be  some  high  wave  that  no 
other  wave  will  reach.  When  M.  Rostand  had 
surprised  the  world  with  "  Cyrano  de  Bergerac,'' 
it  was  not  unnatural  that  the  world  should  sup- 
pose that  the  next  play  would  not  sustain  the 
effect. 

Such  doubts  were  set  at  rest  on  the  appearance 
of  "  L^AIglon,'*  when  the  book  was  read,  and 
doubly  so  when  the  play  was  seen.  Many  thought 
that   M.   Rostand  had  bettered  his  masterpiece. 


ROSTAND  81 

This  tragedy,  with  Its  poor,  weak  Kttle  hero,  with 
all  its  frivolity,  all  its  decadent  circumstance, 
made  a  stronger  effect  than  its  wonderful  prede- 
cessor— stronger,  if  less  obvious. 

As  before,  we  have  under  very  special  condi- 
tions a  figure  of  general  appeal.  This  young 
man,  yearning  after  that  great  inheritance  which 
he  hears,  which  he  feels  is  his,  imagining  it  in  all 
sorts  of  glittering  and  deceptive  circumstance, 
treasuring  scraps  of  others'  reminiscences,  gain- 
ing hope  from  misinterpreted  detail,  indulging 
his  fancy  with  aimless  triviality,  daring  in  ill- 
advised  effort, — for  he  hardly  knows  just  what, 
— failing  and  surrendering  himself  to  the  inev- 
itable currents  of  life  and  even  death, — he  Is  not 
for  us  particularly  the  young  Napoleon,  he  is 
merely  what  he  essentially  is,  a  poignant  example 
of  the  fate  that  stands  ready  for  all  humanity. 

"L'Aiglon"  was  first  produced  in  New  York  not 
long  after  a  revival  of  "  Hamlet,"  so  that  it  was 
not  unnatural  to  think  of  the  Prince  of  Denmark 
in  his  weeds  of  customary  black  while  looking  on 
the  French  prince  in  his  Austrian  white.  With- 
out comparing  M.  Rostand  with  Shakespeare,  we 
may  still  compare  the  great  figure  of  English 
romanticism  in  its  heydey  with  this  later  figure  of 
French  romance.  It  is  perhaps  singular  that  in 
an  age  pre-eminent  for  exuberant  conception  and 


82  ROSTAND 

fulfilled  achievement  the  greatest  creation  of  lit- 
erature should  have  been  the  man  who  thought 
too  closely  on  the  event,  and  kept  on  living  to 
say,  This  thing^s  to  do,  until  circumstances  took 
the  matter  out  of  his  hands.  Not  less  singular  is 
it — if  either  be  singular  at  all — that  at  the  end 
of  a  century  of  unrivalled  material  achievement 
should  appear  this  presentation  of  the  prince  who 
strove  to  realise  his  fancies  and  failed. 

So  M.  Rostand  is  not  merely  a  Romanticist  in 
the  sense  that  he  gives  us  rattling  sword-and- 
mantle  plays,  in  which  things  happen,  according 
to  the  saying  of  the  day.  He  is  that  sort  of  neo- 
Romanticist  whose  figures  are  types — a  romancer, 
we  may  think,  of  the  school  of  Hawthorne.  And 
his  figures  generally  typify  the  same  thing. 
Rudel  is  the  poet  whose  love  for  the  ideal  leads 
him  to  his  own  death,  happily  unknowing  of  the 
reality  which  is  nearest  him.  Cyrano  is  the 
average  man,  perhaps,  though  one  of  immense 
talent,  the  man  who  sees  what  he  really  is,  what  he 
really  might  be,  perhaps,  but  reconciles  himself 
slowly  to  the  impossibility  of  ever  making  the 
ideal  conquer  the  world.  And  the  Due  de  Reich- 
stadt  surely  is  an  idealist  of  the  first  water.  No 
confident  holder  of  the  faith  in  the  presence  of 
undeniable  fact  was  more  determined  than  the 
Duke  as  he  listens  to  Mettemich  and  finally  breaks 


ROSTAND  83 

the  mirror.  He,  too,  gives  way  to  the  fact  of  the 
matter,  but  he  Is  broken  and  not  bent. 

What  Is  It  that  leads  M.  Rostand  to  this  pres- 
entation of  Invariable  failure?  Is  It  because  he  is 
morbid,  cynical,  pessimistic,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.? 
Hardly.  It  Is  due  to  something  far  more  general 
than  such  possibilities,  namely,  the  tragic  quality 
of  great  drama — I  had  almost  said  of  great  lit- 
erature. In  spite  of  all  that  has  been  said  about 
the  agreement  of  literature  and  life,  there  Is  this 
singular  and  Important  difference,  that  literature 
is  In  Its  greatest  moments  tragic,  and  that  life  Is 
not.  M.  Rostand  writes  as  he  does  because  he  Is 
a  dramatist,  a  poet,  a  man  of  letters,  and  not  a 
pastor,  a  philanthropist,  or  a  philosopher.  As 
such  he  cannot  present  the  world  as  being  all  de- 
lightful and  right  In  the  end.  No  great  poets 
while  they  were  great  have  done  so;  Job,  Helen, 
Hamlet,  Don  Qulxo^,  Faust,  Colonel  Newcome, — 
these  all  are  tragic  figures. 

I  cannot  pretend  to  explain,  from  the  stand- 
point of  aesthetics,  why  this  should  be  so.  The 
frivolous  (and  I  am  often  one  of  them)  will  say 
that  every  story  must  have  an  end,  and  that  death 
Is  the  only  end  that  will  stay  ended,  among  matters 
of  Importance.  Minor  matters  certainly  come  to 
an  end,  as  clothes,  for  Instance,  the  best  even  of 
dinners,  light  loves  In  the  portal.     But  with  the 


S4  ROSTAND 

really  important  things  it  is  different.  Marriage, 
of  course,  often  plays  the  role  of  conclusion,  on 
the  stage  or  in  the  book,  but  it  is  one  of  the  un- 
realities of  comedy  that  it  does  so.  Look  about 
for  an  end,  and  you  will  find  it  hard  to  think  of 
any  but  death  or  disappointment,  which,  if  it  be 
really  an  end,  is  much  the  same  thing. 

Without  taking  this  view  too  seriously,  we 
shall  perhaps  admit  that  it  is  not  for  literature 
to  demonstrate  that  things  are  going  all  right. 
That  seems  rather  the  office  of  philosophy  (if  it 
wants  to  try  it)  or  of  religion.  Literature  is  for 
our  emotions.  Now  happiness  is  emotionally  de- 
lightful, but  by  its  very  nature  it  is  not  perma- 
nent. "  Even  in  the  very  temple  of  Delight, 
veiled  Melancholy  hath  her  sovran  shrine,"  said 
Keats,  with  that  direct,  far-seeing  intensity  of 
his.  While  man  is  what  he  is,  mere  satisfaction 
can  never  be  final.  And  however  this  may  be  In 
art  in  general,  or  even  in  literature  or  in  poetry, 
it  is  readily  enough  seen  to  be  so  in  the  drama. 
Comedy  certainly  is  delightful,  but  the  great 
things  are  tragic.  And  that  is  because  a  great 
dramatic  moment,  one  that  will  remain  with  us, 
be  permanent,  must  be  complete  in  itself — that  is 
"  say ^  final.  Now  Romeo  and  Juliet  in  the  tomb 
of  the  Capulets  are  final  figures.  So  Hamlet  as 
he  utters  "  The  rest  is  silence."     So  Lear  on  the 


ROSTAND  35 

heath,  beyond  even  the  power  of  Nahum  Tate. 
Comic  figures  there  are  also,  but  one  cannot  bea?^ 
to  think  of  FalstafF  always  laughing.  Romantic 
figures  there  are  too,  suave  and  beautiful.  Ferdi- 
nand and  Miranda,  as  they  play  at  chess,  and 
certainly  we  should  like  to  believe  them  eternal, 
but  the  appeal  is  very  ad  hominerriy  and  the  wise 
will  take  it  for  no  more  than  it  is. 

So  Cyrano  throwing  his  bag  of  money  on  the 
stage  is  a  permanent  figure.  "  Quel  geste,'*  he 
says,  feeling  the  thing  to  the  bottom,  but  without 
troubling  to  analyse  it.  So  L'Aiglon  breaking 
the  mirror  is  a  permanent  figure.  So  Rudel  on 
the  deck  of  his  galley. 

These  figures  give  us  dramatic  moments.  But 
they  also  mean  something,  and  we  Anglo-Saxons 
are  dead  set  on  seeing  what  they  mean.  "  The 
most  popular  play  of  the  final  decade  of  the  cen- 
tury presents  no  problem  whatsoever,  and  avoids 
any  criticism  of  life,"  says  a  critic  of  eminence, 
as  though  it  were  a  fault.  Mme.  Bernhardt  and 
M.  Coquelin,  however,  see  that  these  things 
have  their  meaning  for  those  who  appreciate  them 
and  never  think  of  explaining.  So  M.  Rostand. 
He  contents  himself  with  dramatic  figures.  They 
justify  themselves.  Explanation  belongs  to  the 
philosopher. 

And  we,  too,  may  be  satisfied  with  M.  Rostand,. 

^       OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


36  ROSTAND 

in  spit€  of  the  invariable  shade.  A  greater  man 
would  perhaps  be  more  reassuring.  Tennyson 
has  King  Arthur  fail  because  it  is  not  in  the  plan 
of  things  for  any  individual  to  bring  in  the  mil- 
lennium, and  Browning  believes  that  a  man's  reach 
must  exceed  his  grasp.  We  need  not  be  concerned 
at  M.  Rostand's  being  a  pessimist,  if  such  he  be; 
it  is  often  a  fine  thing  to  recognise  and  admit 
pessimism  as  an  element  in  life.  It  is  of  course 
a  pity  that  his  handling  is  not  perfect;  the  last 
acts  of  "  Cyrano,"  of  "  L'Aiglon,"  are  they  not 
weak.?  But  even  here  there  is  something  in  har- 
mony with  the  idea. 


HAUPTMANN 

Ten  years  ago,  say,  the  name  of  Gerhardt 
Hauptmann  was  a  magic  name;  it  was  almost  a 
charm  in  itself  to  cause  the  most  glorious  aesthetic 
thrills.  It  represented  the  finest  things  in  litera- 
ture. It  is  now  rarely  heard.  "  So  sinks  the 
daystar  in  the  ocean  bed,  and  yet  anon  flames  in 
the  forehead  of  the  morning  sky."  There  is  for- 
tunately plenty  of  time. 

Hauptmann,  however,  never  achieved  such  im- 
mediate, such  inordinate,  such  universal  success 
as  did  M.  Rostand.  But  though  he  became  more 
gradually,  if  less  widely,  known,  he  was,  in  a  way, 
more  stimulating  and  inspiring  thereby.  M.  Ros- 
tand became  famous  at  one  stroke.  With  Haupt- 
mann each  new  play  was  a  successive  emotion  and 
excitement.  Every  new  play  was  a  new  revela- 
tion of  the  soul  of  the  artist;  it  raised,  for  one 
and  another  while,  those  clouds  which  keep  from 
the  average  soul  that  intellectual  horizon  which  it 
longs  for,  that  emotional  sunlight  which  puts 
everything  into  the  vivid  reality,  and  makes 
even  common  things  for  the  time  being  lovely. 

87 


38  HAUPTMANN 

Hence  the  thrill  with  which  one  first  read  the 
words — 

"  Open  the  window.  Let  in  Light  and  God ! '' 
To  those  who  had  followed  Hauptmann  play  after 
play,  they  had  the  added  demonstration  of  actual 
experience. 

It  was  in  1889  that  "  Vor  Sonnenaufgang  ■' 
was  given  by  the  Freie  Biihne.  The  performance 
was  made  a  battlefield  between  the  old  school  and 
the  new.  The  inordinate  excitement  of  that  war, 
of  the  war  of  which  that  was  a  campaign,  has  now 
died  down.  I  remember  it,  and  would  wonder  at 
myself  for  having  been  so  stirred  by  it,  did  I 
not  remember  also  how  sincere  the  emotion  was. 
"  Horrible  things  were  witnessed  "  in  that  play ; 
"  A  picture  of  hell  itself  would  have  paled  by  the 
side  of  it;  Zola  and  Tolstoi  would  have  had  to 
confess  *  He  can  do  better  than  we.'  "  Such  were 
the  expressions  of  Spielhagen  some  time  after- 
ward, who  held  the  battlefield  to  have  been  a 
Waterloo  for  the  new  school. 

When  we  look  back  it  seems  natural  enough. 
Hauptmann  was  of  a  very  sensitive,  artistic  dis- 
position. He  had  not  found  his  real  power  in 
his  efforts  at  sculpture,  nor  in  his  studies  in 
zoology,  nor  in  his  essays  at  poetry.  It  was  very 
natural  that,  unless  he  had  been  strongly  impelled 
5n  some  very  different  direction,  he  should  have 


HAUPTMANN  39 

followed  the  influences  of  the  moment.  And  given 
so  much,  it  was  not  remarkable  that  he  should 
have  gone  ahead  of  the  advance. 

When  one  reads  Hauptmann's  early  plays,  "  Vor 
Sonnenaufgang,'*  "  Das  Friedensfest,"  "  Einsame 
Menschen,*'  one  thinks,  necessarily  almost,  of 
Tolstoi,  Zola,  Ibsen.  They  give  us  pretty  con- 
sistent realism  in  form  and  matter.  The  last  is 
by  far  the  best,  but  if  Hauptmann  had  done  no 
better,  he  would  hardly  remain  in  the  minds  of 
those  who  have  no  especial  turn  for  German  lit- 
erature. Looking  back  to  the  play,  I  recall  most 
readily  the  figure  of  Anna  Mahr.  It  is  almost 
worth  while  to  re-read  the  play  to  vivify  that 
strong  and  delicate  figure,  typical  of  so  much  of 
the  Ufe  of  her  time  and  of  ours,  at  once  suggestive 
and  tragic.  And  yet  even  as  a  figure — entirely 
aside  from  the  play — ^Anna  Mahr  is  not  the 
dramatic  figure  that  will  flash  to  mind  in  Magdgu 
And  whether  she  be  or  not,  the  play  itself  is  cer- 
tainly not  greater  than  "  Mutter  Erde."  So  far 
at  least  Hauptmann  had  not  shown  himself 
greater  than  Sudermann  or  Max  Halbe.  He 
went  on,  however,  and  did  more. 

He  remained  a  realist,  even  a  naturalist.  But 
there  is  not  much  reminiscence  of  the  great  leaders 
in  the  plays  that  immediately  followed.  Haupt- 
mann now  strikes  out  more  for  himself.     In  "  Die 


40  HAUPTMANN 

Weber  "  he  goes  as  far  as  one  can  readily  imagine 
the  stage  can  go.  The  play  is  written  of  a  weavers' 
strike.  It  is  not,  however,  a  play  that  takes  a 
weavers'  strike  for  a  background,  or  a  setting, 
or  a  situation  in  which  a  hero,  or  heroine,  other 
characters  shall  be  presented.  The  play  takes 
the  strike  itself  for  its  subject.  There  is  no  hera 
and  no  heroine;  characters  there  are,  but  only 
because  there  must  be  people  on  the  stage  to  have 
any  play  at  all.  The  same  people  do  not  hold 
our  interest;  quite  a  new  set  of  people  appear  in 
the  third  act,  and  we  hardly  hear  of  the  old  ones. 
The  strike,  however,  is  before  us  throughout;  the 
strike  is  the  only  character  of  importance;  men 
and  women  appear  and  disappear  only  that  the 
strike  may  be  presented  to  us.  An  extraordinary 
conception,  and  one  subversive  of  the  common 
ideas  of  the  stage,  but  logical  enough  realism, 
Hauptmann  read  about  the  strike  in  a  pamphlet, 
and  proceeded  to  put  it  on  the  stage.  The  wonder 
is  that  he  could  make  it  seem  dramatic  and  power- 
ful. This  wonder,  however,  he  was  able  to  accom- 
plish. 

Still  realistic,  but  this  time  with  a  truly  artistic 
contempt  for  logic,  Hauptmann  next  produced  a 
play  about  a  beaver-skin.  You  may  see  it  on  the 
German  stage  to-day :  "  Devilish  funny,  but  no 
drama  and  no  art,"  I  am  told  by  a  wholly  com- 


HAUPTMANN  41 

petent  authority.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  of  it  I 
can  read  only  about  one  word  in  four,  which  gives 
me  but  a  fragmentary  idea  of  what  it  presents.  I 
must  pass  it  by;  I  have  enjoyed  Hauptmann 
greatly  without  it. 

This  play,  however,  and  another,  "  College 
Crampton,"  I  learn  from  the  conscientious  biog- 
rapher of  Hauptmann,  were  suggested  in  spirit 
by  Moliere.  And  without  as  a  rule  going  into 
the  question  of  influences  and  sources  and  so  on, 
it  is  curious  to  note  for  the  moment  the  different 
forms  in  which  this  realist  presents  himself  to  us, 
or,  rather,  presents  his  view  of  the  world.  Real- 
ism, in  Zola's  phrase,  consists  of  the  facts  of  life 
seen  through  a  temperament.  Hauptmann's  tem-' 
perament  would  seem  to  be  that  of  the  chame- 
leon ;  he  is  a  modem  Proteus,  and  sounds  his  horn^ 
from  under  many  disguises.  In  his  first  play  hej 
is  like  Tolstoi,  in  his  second  Uke  Zola,  in  his  third 
hke  Ibsen.  In  his  fourth  we  see  through  the  eyes 
of  Dr.  Zimmermann  the  pamphleteer.  In  the  fifth 
it  is  Moliere.  Certainly  (if  Zola  be  right)  it  is 
a  curious  thing  that  the  man  will  not  see  through 
his  own  temperament. 

Still  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  another  man,  and 
he  also  the  greatest  artist  in  letters  of  his  nation 
of  his  day,  did  just  the  same  thing.  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  was  a  very  different  man  from 


42  HAUPTMANN 

Hauptmann,  and  had  a  very  different  view  of  the 
world.  But  he  was  like  him  in  that,  whatever 
his  temperament,  his  artistic  and  poetic  nature 
was  always  curiously  trying  and  testing  new  and 
particular  methods  and  ways  of  doing  what  he 
wished  to  do, — "  Dr.  Jeykll  and  Mr.  Hyde," 
"  Prince  Otto,"  "  Treasure  Island,"  "  Will  o'  the 
Mill,"  "  The  Black  Arrow,"  he  is  as  romantic  as 
Hauptmann  is  realistic.  We  might  recognise  all 
those  books  as  by  the  same  man,  but  in  them, 
as  in  Hauptmann's  first  plays,  we  see  the  man 
>  using  the  different  forms,  the  modes  of  expression 
that  we  are  familiar  with  elsewhere.  It  is  not 
/  that  an  original  genius  must  of  necessity  invent 
'  an  original  form ;  that  'is  far  from  the  truth. 
But  that  an  original  genius  should  adopt  such 
varying  specialities  of  form,  each  of  which  seems 
characteristic  of  something  in  itself,  that  does 
seem  singular.  It  would  seem  to  be  one  of  the 
curious  things  In  the  psychology  of  the  artist 
that  the  most  exquisite  natures  often  have  this 
mimetic  character.  Perhaps  It  Is  because  they 
are  the  most  sensitive ;  Whistler  was  a  man  rather 
like  that. 

In  all  these  things,  however,  Hauptmann  was 

r  8L  realist,  by  which  I  mean  that  he  was  absorbed 

and  interested  in  the  facts  of  life,  and  thought 

it  well  to  present  them  in  much  the  same  way  that 


HAUPTMANN  43 

he  saw  them.  The  romanticist  does  not  do  that: 
he  commonly  presents  his  view  of  Hfe  in  forms 
that  he  has  not  seen.  M.  Rostand  has  something  to 
say;  he  likes  to  present  it  in  forms  very  different 
from  the  forms  he  sees  around  him.  A  fanciful 
anywhere  "  if  the  costumes  are  pretty,"  the  mar- 
vellous East  of  the  Crusades,  the  bare  but  glowing 
hills  of  Galilee,  Old  Paris,  Schonbrunn  and  the 
field  of  Wagram, — these  places  and  the  people 
appertaining  to  them  are  interesting  to  him. 
They  recur  to  his  mind,  take  form  and  combina- 
tion there,  gain  a  significance  from  his  theory  of 
life,  from  their  relation  to  it,  and  when  they  de- 
velop into  a  finished  play  they  are  found  to  pre- 
sent a  fact  or  facts,  a  meaning,  a  lesson,  even,  for 
such  as  wish  to  be  taught,  but  all  in  the  glowing, 
glorious,  poetic,  imaginative,  beautiful  figures 
that  the  poet  loved. 

It  is  not  so  with  Hauptmann.     His  ideas  are 
different  from  those  of  M.  Rostand  for  one  thing. 
M.   Rostand  stands  aloof  and  generalises.     But 
Hauptmann  is  near  enough  to  be  intensely  moved  i 
by  great  wrongs  and  great  struggles  for  redress.) 
He  is  so  near  the  particular  thing  that  he  becomesA 
absorbed  in  it.     Why  should  a  man  who  wants  to  I 
present  the  cruelty  and  crime  involved  in  the  fail- 
ure of  a  great  strike,  why  should  he  write  about 
the  Sacred  Mount  and  the  belly  and  the  members? 


44  HAUPTMANN 

True,  Shakespeare  took  that  way  to  say  what  he 
wished  to  say,  but  then  Shakespeare  can  hardly 
have  felt  about  current  life  as  Hauptmann  did. 
He  was  a  larger  man  and  had  larger  views,  but 
certainly  he  controlled  very  well  any  great  sym- 
pathy he  might  have  had  for  some  of  his  more 
limited  brothers  and  sisters. 

Hauptmann  went  in  for  it  seriously.  He  would 
show  the  world  as  it  was.  And  whether  he  took 
the  method  of  Ibsen  or  of  MoKere,  he  was  always 
there  himself  with  his  sympathy,  his  ideas,  and 
his  poetry. 

For  that  he  was  a  poet  appeared  in  what  came 
next.  I  like  "  Hanneles  Himmelf  ahrt "  best  of 
all  Hauptmann's  work,  and  I  am  quite  sure  that 
it  is  the  most  characteristic  thing  he  has  done.  I 
mean  to  re-read  it  at  this  moment.  Or,  rather, 
I  would,  except  that  here  it  is  better  to  write  from 
one's  recollection  than  with  one's  eye  on  the  text. 
The  drama  ought  to  make,  to  have  made,  an  im- 
pression on  one;  if  it  does  not  it  fails,  and  by  as 
much  as  the  impression  is  not  lasting,  by  so  much 
has  the  drama  failed  of  its  possibilities. 

From  the  midst,  then,  of  a  time  years  back,  a 
time  full  of  other  work  and  other  interests,  a  time 
separated  from  Now  by  all  sorts  of  differences, 
appears  the  figure  of  Hannele  cowering  in  her 
miserable  little  bed,  and  of  the  Angel  of  Death 


HAUPTMANN  45 

looming  up  affectionately  before  the  high  stove; 
and  again  of  the  little  girl  all  aglow  with  interest 
and  excitement,  and  the  good  and  kind  tailor, 
who  has  brought  her  the  white  dress  and  crystal 
slippers;  and  again  of  the  appearance  of  the 
stranger,  the  worker,  the  physician,  him  of  the 
robe  without  a  stain  who  comes  to  guide  her 
whither  she  is  to  go. 

Well,  and  what  of  it  all?  I  can  Imagine  some 
disagreeable  person  saying.  Frankly,  reader,  I 
do  not  quite  know.  Those  figures  were  very 
beautiful  to  me  once — if  I  read  the  play  again 
they  would  be  beautiful  once  more. 

But  beyond  that  they  have  their  significance. 
I  cannot  now  remember  just  what  they  did  signify 
to  me  once,  nor  can  I  say  that  in  Hauptmann's 
mind  they  ever  signified  such  and  such  thoughts. 
That  would  give  something  of  a  false  idea.  Haupt- 
mann,  himself  a  thorough-paced  realist  so  far, 
now  presents  an  object  different  from  anything 
that  had  come  from  his  hand.  It  is  now  realistic 
psychology,  as  we  may  say,  that  is  the  main  thing. 
Here  is  the  country  almshouse  and  the  wretched 
creatures  in  it;  here  is  a  poor,  abused  little  girl 
who  is  brought  there  to  die.  The  play  follows 
her  last  hours  and  presents  her  feverish  and  fan- 
tastic thought.  All  that  follows — the  figure  of 
her  dead  mother,   the  three   angels,   the  sudden 


46  HAUPTMANN 

changes,  the  great  angel  with  dark  garments  and 
dark  wings,  the  village  tailor,  the  stranger — is  but 
the  creation  of  the  fading  power  of  the  childish 
soul,  mingled  curiously  with  the  realities  of  the 
Deaconess,  Pastor  Gottwald,  and  the  poor  crea- 
tures of  the  almshouse.  That,  as  a  subject  for 
a  "  dream  poem,"  was  Hauptmann's  interest,  I 
suppose,  and  not  such  and  such  ideas  signified 
thereby. 

Still  the  figure  and  the  passing  dream  bring 
ideas  and  moods,  and  bring,  too,  moments  of 
serenity  to  the  soul,  even  when  somewhat  choked 
with  the  materialities  of  ashes  and  sugar  plums. 

In  this  play  Hauptmann  is  more  himself  than 
ever  before  or  since.  Heretofore  he  had  tried 
different  forms,  henceforward  he  tries  more ;  there 
seems  no  end  to  his  power  of  varying  the  mask 
of  form.  But  everything  else  that  he  wrote  could 
be  put  alongside  of  something  else.  The  early 
plays  have  easy  analogues ;  even  "  Die  Weber " 
was  preceded  by  Verhaeren's  "  The  Dawn,"  which 
is  not  unlike  it.  The  later  plays,  too,  are  in  gen- 
eral not  unlike  others.  "  Die  versunkene  Glocke  " 
is  one  of  a  number  of  Marchendramen,  "  Florian 
Geyer"  is  a  historic  play,  in  form  at  least  much 
what  Wildendruch  might  have  written ;  in  "  Fuhr- 
mann  Henschel "  he  was  said  at  once  to  have  "  re- 
turned "  to  something  that  his  admirers  approved. 


HAUPTMANN  47 

But  "  Hanneles  Himmelfahrt,"  the  Traum- 
dichtung,  resembles  nothing  else  that  I  can  think 
of.  It  has  all  the  rest  of  Hauptmann, — the  real- 
ism, the  psychology,  that  we  have  seen, — ^joined 
«e  romance  and  the  poetry  that  were  to  have 
play  in  years  to  come.  In  motive  It  is  a 
little  like  Maeterlinck's  "  Mort  de  Tintagiles," 
and  creates  something  of  the  same  effect.  But 
that  is  a  very  different  kind  of  work,  and  entirely 
lacks  the  vitality  which  is  one  of  the  virtues  of 
"  Hannele." 

Like  most  of  the  previous  plays,  "  Hannele  '* 
created  a  considerable  stir,  this  time  on  religious 
grounds  as  well  as  those  of  art.  Hauptmann 
went  on  calmly,  and  instead  of  trying  to  do  again 
anything  he  had  done  well  once,  he  wrote  a  his- 
torical drama,  "  Florian  Geyer,"  into  which  he 
put  his  whole  energy,  only  to  meet  with  a  failure. 
It  was  followed  by  "  Die  versunkene  Glocke,"  the  . 
play  which  made  Hauptmann  really  famous,  by 
which  he  Is  generally  known. 

And  yet  the  play  is.  In  a  way,  not  representa- 
tive. If  you  read  only  "  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities  " 
you  might  perhaps  wonder  that  Dickens  is  often 
thought  of  as  a  humourist.  If  you  read  only 
"  Die  versunkene  Glocke  "  you  will  wonder,  per- 
haps, why  Hauptmann  should  be  thought  of  as 
a  realist.     For  it  is  a  romantic,  fairy  play  in 


48  HAUPTMANN 

poetry,  very  different  certainly  from  the  plays 
which  had  gone  before,  and  different  too  from 
those  that  followed.  It  is  without  much  doubt 
the  greatest  piece  of  work  of  its  author,  but  it  is 
work  in  a  very  different  direction  from  that  in 
which  we  are  accustomed  to  look  for  him.  It 
was  first  acted  in  1896,  and  will  doubtless  be  re- 
membered by  many  either  at  the  Irving  Place 
Theatre  or  as  given  by  Mr.  Sothern. 

The  play  begins  at  once.  Up  the  mountain, 
into  the  old,  undisturbed  world  of  romance,  comes 
the  artist,  broken-hearted  at  the  failure  of  his 
work  for  men.  He  had  tried,  perhaps,  to  do  too 
much,  and  has  met  failure. 

It  is  very  beautiful,  certainly,  this  world  of 
romance.  It  was  beautiful  on  the  stage,  and  it 
is  still  beautiful  in  the  play,  for  one  of  the  charms 
with  which  literature  compensates  for  its  lack  of 
vivid  visual  impressions  is  that  it  lasts.  It  is 
like  the  walls  of  Camelot,  which  were  not  built  at 
all  and  are  therefore  built  for  ever.  So  we  can 
go  at  will  to  that  upland  mountain-meadow,  with 
its  violets  and  primroses,  and  the  bees  that  sip 
gold  from  the  crocuses,  and  the  pines  that  rustle 
round  about.  There  the  Nickelmann  lives,  or  there 
he  appears  in  the  spring  from  his  home  deep  down 
underneath  the  hills.  He  is  hoary  and  covered 
with  moss  and  weeds.     There,  too,  lives  the  wood- 


HAUPTMANN  49 

scrattle,  a  coarse  and  licentious  creature  who 
strangely  smokes  a  pipe.  There,  also,  are  dwarfs 
and  elves.  There  is  Rautendelein,  half  human,  it 
would  seem,  and  half  a  bit  of  nature.  She  plays 
with  the  bee  and  teases  the  Nickelmann  and  dances 
with  the  elves,  if  she  chooses,  and  jeers  at  the 
wood-scrattle  and  his  goatish  legs.  She  has  a 
grandmother,  too,  a  wise  woman,  who  leads  rather  a 
surly  existence  among  these  simple  folk  and  feeds 
the  little  Trolls  with  milk.  The  German  forest 
is  certainly  a  fine  place,  and  I  have  always  loved 
it,  from  early  readings  in  Grimm  down;  we  have 
no  such  creatures  in  our  forests.  And  I  have 
forgotten  the  dwarfs  who  are  there,  too;  and  all 
is  up  on  the  mountain-side,  far  above  the  abodes 
of  men.  Nature  has  withdrawn  to  herself  before 
the  march  of  civiHsation.  What  elements  of 
humanity  there  are  are  merely  animal,  unless  we 
except  the  natural  knowledge  of  the  Wittich. 

So  much  the  play  certainly  has  developed  and 
carried  out  with  description  and  picture ;  so  much 
for  every  one,  whether  more  or  not.  Nature  and 
art  the  play  presents,  and  like  any  fine  big  piece 
of  work,  it  is  full  of  all  sorts  of  things  that  reward 
a  reader  who  may  come  again  and  again,  as  one 
may  climb  a  mountain  again  and  again,  and 
always  find  something  new  on  the  way,  although 
there  is  always  the  same  view  from  the  top.    When 


60  HAUPTMANN 

Keats  wrote  "  Endymion  "  he  very  sensibly  noticed 
that  it  was  one  of  the  things  that  people  liked, 
to  have  enough  in  a  poem  to  be  able  to  pick  and 
choose,  to  find  always  some  new  charm  or  some- 
thing perhaps  that  had  once  charmed  and  then 
slipped  from  mind.  In  this  forest  region  we  can 
walk  often,  always  finding  something  to  notice, 
something  quaint,  beautiful,  stimulating. 

Into  this  world  of  nature  wanders  Heinrich,  the 
artist.  He  had  almost  finished  a  great  and  beau- 
tiful work  and  has  been  bitterly  disappointed  by 
failure  at  the  final  moment.  He  gains  by  chance 
a  glimpse  of  Nature  in  her  secret  beauty  and 
charm.  Before  he  is  brought  back  to  the  valley 
by  his  friends  who  have  come  to  look  for  him,  he 
sees  Rautendelein. 

And  here,  with  the  very  beginning  of  the  action 
of  the  play,  comes  an  element  into  the  play  that 
is  not  so  simply  handled — namely,  that  which  is 
loosely  called  the  symbolism  of  the  play.  It  would 
seem  that  in  this  play  of  the  Artist  and  Nature 
and  the  World  of  Men,  there  must  be  some  hidden 
meaning.  It  arouses  our  curiosity, — a  little,  I 
am  afraid,  like  a  cryptograph, — we  want  to  know 
what  it  all  means. 
'  /.  The  artist  who  has  endured  a  bitter  fail  are  has 
/  a  glimpse  of  the  secrets  of  nature,  and  though 
borne  down  to  his  home  on  lower  levels,  it  is  by 


HAUPTMANN  61 

one  of  the  spirits  of  nature  that  he  is  cured.  He 
leaves  his  home,  and  with  the  fresh,  natural  being 
he  has  learned  to  know  he  goes  up  the  mountain, 
back  to  nature  once  more.  He  finds  his  strength 
increased  tenfold.  But  the  power  of  humanity 
is  too  strong;  his  dead  wife  draws  him  down  from 
his  retreat.  And  as  for  his  beautiful  spirit  of 
nature,  half  human  as  she  seems,  the  power  of 
nature  is  too  much  for  her;  she  is  drawn  down 
among  the  founts  at  the  foundations  of  the  earth. 
This  is  the  essential  story  of  the  "  Versunkene 
Glocke  "  shorn  of  its  colour,  and  beauty,  and  body. 
What  would  Hauptmann  signify  by  it? 

If  it  were  pretty  obvious  that  he  wished  to  sig- 
nify something  of  importance,  I  should  think  that 
one  ought  to  know  what  it  is.  But  as  the  signifi- 
cance is  clearly  something  not,  on  the  face  of  it, 
obvious — for  the  author's  countrymen  have  pre- 
sented quite  a  number  of  different  explanations 
of  it — ^I  am  content  to  read  the  play  as  a  play 
rather  than  a  conundrum. 

So  then  it  may  be  asked:  Is  the  figure  of  Hein- 
rich  without  significance?  And,  if  so,  why  should 
any  dramatic  poem  have  significance  ?  What  does 
Rudel  stand  for?  Cyrano?  L'Aiglon?  If  these 
figures  are  significant,  why  not  Heinrich?  Surely 
it  is  an  eccentric  outcome  to  one's  speculation  that 
presents  M.  Rostand  as  the  dramatist  of  ideas  and 


m  HAUPTMANN 

Hauptmann  the  dramatist  of  legendary  romance 
alone. 

The  play  certainly  offers  us  dramatic  situations. 
Let  us  take  one  at  random.  The  Pastor  has  come 
to  persuade  Helnrlch  to  leave  the  mountain  where 
he  Is  living  joyfully  and  doing  great  work  and  to 
return  to  his  home.  The  artist  Is  flushed  with 
success;  the  visitor  Is  by  no  means  disconcerted 
At  what  he  sees  around  him.  "  Now  God  be 
thanked ! "  says  he.  "  You  are  the  same  old 
friend. 

Heinrich,  I  am  the  same — and  yet  another,  too. 
Open  the  window.     Let  In  Light  and  God. 

Pastor.  A  noble  saying. 

Heinrich,  I  know  none  better. 

Pastor.  I  know  of  better — still  that  one  Is 
good.'' 

y  Here,  certainly.  In  these  few  words  between  the 
'^^Artlst  who  has  abandoned  his  place  among  men 
and  gone  to  the  heart  of  nature,  and  the  Priest 
who  has  gone  to  put  before  him  the  claim  of  a 
power  higher  than  nature,  here  there  certainly  Is 
significance,  such  as  any  one  can  see,  such  as  Is 
almost  explicit  In  words  and  characters.  But 
further  there  cannot  be  any  symbolic  significance 
found  for  It  which  equals  the  real  and  fundamental 
significance  of  the  words  and  situation.  Take 
the  simplest  kind  of  symbolic  significance — let  us 


HAUPTMANN  63 

say,  there  are  Art  and  Religion.  Surely  any  such 
abstraction  as  that  is  absolutely  empty  of  mean- 
ing when  we  compare  it  with  the  creation  of  the 
Artist  and  the  Man  of  God.  We  have  the  meaning 
when  we  merely  create  in  our  minds  Heinrich,  the 
Bell-caster,  who  is  at  work  among  the  mountains, 
and  the  Pastor  of  his  earlier  days,  who  seeks  to 
bring  him  back  to  his  home.  I  do  not  mean  to  go 
into  it  as  a  question  of  Realist  or  Ideal  Philosophy, 
but  merely  to  speak  of  it  as  a  matter  of  the  drama. 
And  here,  we  may  say  without  the  slightest  doubt, 
that  whatever  abstract  idea  may  be  implied  in 
words  and  situation,  it  can  add  little  to  the  real 
meaning  of  them.  Compared  with  the  intellectual 
and  emotional  powers  which  could  create  the  situ- 
ation and  words,  any  further  thinking  which 
could  be  tacked  to  them  by  allegory,  will  seem 
feeble  in  the  extreme.  "  To  one  reader,  '  Die 
versunkene  Glocke,'  conveys  a  certain  impression; 
to  another  an  entirely  different  significance  may 
be  suggested.  Both  may  be  right."  On  the  other 
hand  both  may  be,  and  probably  are,  wrong,  if 
^^  significance  "  means  explanation  of  the  meaning, 
for  the  real  appeal  of  the  drama  is  not  in  any 
significance  or  meaning,  but  in  its  figures  and  its 
situations  and  what  they  are.  Heinrich  leaves  his 
wife  and  children  and  goes  up  the  mountain  with 
Rautendelein.     Why  say  that  it  typifies  anything 


54  HAUPTMANN 

more  than  Rip  Van  Winkle,  who  did  much  the 
same  thing,  except  that  his  elfish  beings  were 
stout  little  Dutchmen  instead  of  charming  young 
women.  The  situation  is  certainly  one  which 
makes  a  wide  appeal  to  all  sorts  of  lurking  in- 
stincts of  the  heart.  Man  is  not  yet  so  absolutely 
civilised  that  such  a  rush  to  freedom  does  not  at 
times  seem  an  escape  from  bothers  and  monotonies 
which  he  would  often  be  without.  But  is  it  any 
^eal  addition  to  the  impression  to  say  that  Art 
finds  Domesticity  irksome  and  seeks  the  freedom 
of  Nature?  I  fancy  not.  That  is  a  very  simple 
piece  of  generalisation  and  from  a  very  small  num- 
ber of  examples,  but  however  that  may  be,  it  is 
not  as  a  generalisation  that  the  thing  will  interest 
us.  !  If  we  wanted  a  generalisation  we  should  go  to 
the  moralist,  who  would  give  us  the  facts  with  the 
proper  inductions  and  deductions.  What  we  want 
is  something  for  the  imagination,  something  that 
we  can  sympathise  with,  something  that  will  have 
more  effect  upon  the  fierce  fret  and  grind  of  darker 
moments  than  any  abstraction  has  yet  been  found 
to  have.  And  that  we  get  from  the  figure  itself, 
not  from  any  meaning  which  it  symbolises. 

No — I  think  we  shall  gain  little  by  inquiring  as 
to  the  symbolism  of  "  Die  versunkene  Glocke." 
If  it  were  real  symbolism  it  would  be  another 
thing.    In   real   symbolism — as   that   of  William 


HAUPTMANN  55 

Blake — the  poet,  or  the  painter,  has  some  meaning 
that  he  conveys  by  absolute  symbols,  which,  unless 
we  know  their  meaning,  will  give  us  no  more  hint 
of  it,  than  a  page  of  Plato  would  give  a  newborn 
child.  Thus,  in  Blake's  illustrations  to  the  book 
of  Job,  we  observe  the  moon  to  be  sometimes  in 
one  comer  of  the  picture,  sometimes  in  the  other. 
That  conveys  a  difference  of  meaning.  I  forget 
what  it  is — I  thought  it  of  interest  at  the  time  I 
knew  it — but  the  point  is  that  unless  you  know 
that  difference  of  meaning,  you  will  miss  the  idea 
of  the  picture.  That  is  real  symbolism.  If  you  do 
not  know  the  key  to  Blake,  it  is  impossible  (unless 
you  make  one)  to  know  what  his  pictures  are 
about. 

With  Hauptmann,  as  with  most  artists  with 
whom  the  question  is  raised,  the  matter  is  different. 
With  them  we  generally  have,  not  almost  arbi- 
trary symbols,  but  typical  figures.  The  difference 
is  very  clear.  The  cross  is  a  symbol ;  the  fish  used 
to  be  a  symbol.  But  nobody  could  have  guessed 
what  they  were  symbols  of  who  did  not  know  the 
associations  which  gave  them  meaning.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Good  Samaritan  is  no  symbol;  as 
soon  as  any  one  knows  who  and  what  he  was  his 
significance  is  plain  and  needs  no  explanation.  In 
like  manner  Heinrich  is  doubtless  a  typical  figure, 
just  as  Faust  is,  or  Manfred,  or  Brand.     But 


56  HAUPTMANN 

whatever  he  is  a  type  of,  he  himself  Is,  so  that  one 
who  knows  him,  and  who  feels  his  passion  and  his 
action,  has  what  the  poet  meant  to  present,  and 
more  Important,  has  It  In  the  form  In  which  the 
poet  meant  to  present  It.  A  man  may  prefer  to 
translate  the  poet's  language  Into  his  own,  but 
that  will  be  because  he  does  not  understand  poetry, 
or  does  not  like  it.  It  may  be  a  curious  intellectual 
exercise  to  speculate  farther,  but  unless  there  Is 
very  good  ground  for  supposing  that  the  poet 
himself  went  farther,  we  shall  probably  miss  what 
he  meant  to  express  In  aiming  at  what  he  did  not 
think  of. 

Of  the  succeeding  plays  of  Hauptmann,  I  do 
not  propose  to  speak.  Those  who  thought  of 
*'  Die  versunkene  Glocke ''  as  the  beginning  of  a 
new  epoch,  received  a  shock  In  "  Fuhrmann  Hen- 
schel."  "  Die  versunkene  Glocke  "  was  presented 
toward  the  end  of  1896;  a  year  afterwards  ap- 
peared "  Cyrano  de  Bergerac,"  and  It  appeared 
that  a  great  romantic  awakening  was  beginning. 
It  seems  almost  cynical  for  Hauptmann  at  such 
a  period  to  be  considering  the  situation  of  a  Sile- 
slan  carter,  who  having  promised  his  dead  wife  not 
to  marry,  now  wished  to  marry  the  maid  of  the 
house.  The  play  was  psychological.  Now  psy- 
chology has  Its  romance,  but  "  Fuhrmann  Hen- 
schel  "  did  not  carry  on  the  torch  uplifted  In  "  Die 


HAUPTMANN  57 

versunkene  Glocke."  Nor  did  "  Schluck  und 
Jau."  This  was  a  thoroughly  characteristic  piece 
of  work ;  at  a  time  when  the  world  thought  it  knew 
what  Hauptmann  could  do,  he  proceeded  to  do 
something  quite  beyond  anybody's  reckoning. 
Few,  however,  cared  for  the  '*  Shakespearean " 
farce,  nor  am  I  among  the  number.  "  Michael 
Kramer,"  "  Der  rote  Hahn,"  and  "  Rose  Bernd  " 
were  not  such  surprises,  but  they  were  not  much 
more  successful. 

As  has  often  been  remarked,  Hauptmann  is  an 
individualist;  he  chooses  any  form  that  he  sees 
fit  for  self-expression,  but  he  will  not  harden  into  , 
an  everyday  conventionality  even  of  his  own  mak-  ) 
ing.     You  may  sometimes  find  two  of  his  plays  j 
that  seem  very  much  alike,  but  rarely  are  there 
three  of  a  kind.    But  he  gives  you  himself  in  each. 

And  his  subject-matter,  too,  is  likely  to  be  indi- 
vidualistic. John  Vockerat  and  Anna  Mahr  find 
themselves  together  in  opposition  to  the  world 
about  them;  if  they  "live  their  own  lives"  (f.  e. 
do  as  they  please)  they  will  harm  other  people's. 
Heinrich  the  Bell-founder  pursues  life  in  his  own 
way,  in  despite  of  the  pressure  upon  him  of  the 
ideas  and  ways  of  the  world.  They  are  not,  as 
a  rule,  powerful  personalities,  nor  does  Haupt- 
mann generally  represent  them  as  victorious — 
indeed  the  reverse  is  the  case — ^but  they  are  individ-S 


^8  HAUPTMANN 

ualists.  The  reverse  is  shown  in  "  The  Weavers  '* 
and,  I  suppose,  in  "  Hannele."  It  is  a  very  common 
modern  motive,  appearing  in  all  sorts  of  forms, 
mingling  often  with  such  inconsistencies  as  social- 
ism. Even  where  it  is  not  pre-eminent  in  Haupt- 
mann,  you  will  commonly  feel  its  influence.  He 
seems  to  hold  himself  aloof  with  the  resolve  to  be 
himself,  letting  the  world  take  him  or  leave  him  as 
it  will.  Of  his  fifteen  plays  hardly  a  half  can  be 
said  to  have  been  successful,  save  with  the  most 
devoted. 

In  such  a  case  there  is  a  curious,  perhaps  a 
wholly  unpoetic  interest  in  "  Der  arme  Heinrich.'* 
The  play  is  founded  on  the  poem  of  Hartmann  von 
Aue ;  the  story  tells  how  Heinrich,  lord  of  Aue,  a 
brilliant  and  splendid  knight,  distinguished  by  the 
king  and  famous  for  his  exploits  in  the  Crusades, 
chief  paladin  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  at  the 
very  height  of  his  glory  and  the  vigour  of  his  life 
and  joy  in  the  world,  was  suddenly  struck  with 
leprosy.  Instead  of  being  the  most  wonderful  of 
those  remarkable  combinations  of  imagination  and 
action  which  the  mediaeval  chivalry  holds  out  to  us, 
he  became  simply  an  outcast,  an  object  of  loath- 
ing, one  who  had  to  live  in  some  squalid  place  by 
himself,  and  who  had  to  strike  continually  on  a 
wooden  clapper  that  people  might  know  that  he 
was  near  and  avoid  him. 


HAUPTMANN  69 

That  is  a  fine  subject  for  the  individualist;  a 
leper  has  to  live  his  own  life  partly  because  no  one 
else  wants  to  live  any  part  of  it  for  him,  and  partly 
because  no  one  else  will  let  him  share  a  life  in  com- 
mon. In  the  beginning  of  the  play  Heinrich  is 
among  those  who  are  devoted  to  him,  a  liegeman 
of  the  house  of  Aue,  an  old  retainer,  a  farm  ten- 
ant and  his  wife.  They  are  not  only  his  followers, 
but  they  love  him,  before  they  know  his  secrete 
Then  his  clapper  sends  a  shiver  through  them. 

There  is  therefore  an  interest,  perhaps  unpoetic, 
in  the  lord  and  leper.  Why  does  Hauptmann, 
whose  heroes  seemed  ready  to  stand  out  for  them- 
selves against  God  and  man,  who  lived  their  own 
lives  and  died  their  own  deaths,  why  does  he  now 
present  to  us  the  figure  of  one  who,  in  his  pride, 
is  guilty  of  insolence  to  God  and  is  struck  down 
by  the  powers  he  has  scorned  into  a  terrible  irony 
of  the  state  to  which  he  aspired  And  why,  as  a 
sequel  to  Heinrich  the  Bell-founder,  does  he  elect 
to  present  a  man,  who,  in  seeking  the  highest,  falls 
to  the  lowest,  and  must  be  rescued  from  the  most 
awful  depths  by  the  unselfish  devotion  of  a  girl 
who,  so  far  from  wishing  to  live  for  herself,  de- 
sires rather  to  die  for  him.? 

I  cannot  say,  nor  do  I  believe  it  necessary  at 
once  to  determine.  Read  and  study  a  man's  life 
and  his  writings,  and  the  eccentricities  and  incon- 


60  HAUPTMANN 

sistencies  are  smoothed  out  and  what  was  strange 
appears  sane.  But  does  the  work  mean  more  to 
us?  It  certainly  does,  if  we  misapprehended  it 
before  and  know  it  rightly  now.  It  is  well  enough 
for  an  experiment  to  think  we  can  take  a  poet's 
work  in  some  sense  and  meaning  other  than  that 
he  had  for  it,  but  in  the  main  we  lose  thereby,  for 
we  get  ourself  and  not  the  poet.  In  the  long  run 
we  must  always  wish  to  interpret  a  poem  by  the 
poet's  whole  life  and  work. 

But  that  with  "  Der  arme  Heinrich  *'  is  not,  I 
believe,  possible.  The  genius  of  Hauptmann  is 
constantly  baffling  us.  So  I  take  the  poem  much 
as  it  stands,  an  old  German  saga,  with  all  the 
charm  of  mediaevalism  in  its  material  and  great 
simplicity  and  reserve  in  its  handhng,  and  a  de- 
voted almost  mystical  air  that  is  much  in  the  tone 
of  "  Hannele."  With  the  other  great  play, 
"  Die  versunkene  Glocke,"  this  one  stands  in 
strange  contrast.  They  present  to  us  two  con- 
ceptions which  are  consistent  only  as  many  of 
the  strange  antinomies  of  life  are  consistent,  in  be- 
ing both  true  at  once,  we  cannot  well  say  how.  The 
two  strains  of  revolt  and  resignation;  one  in  the 
figure  of  the  artist  maintaining  himself  stiffly 
through  the  darkness  till  daybreak,  and  the  other 
poor  humanity  (prince  like  beggar  girl)  which 
bows  the  head  and  finds  happiness  in  submission. 


HAUPTMANN  61 

These  three  plays,  I  find,  are  almost  the  only 
ones  of  Hauptmann  that  I  care  much  to  look  over, 
that  abide  in  my  mind.  Perhaps  it  is  because 
I  am  growing  more  romantic  with  the  added 
years  (contrary  to  the  usual  notion  that  youth  is 
the  time  for  romance)  and  do  not  care  so  much 
for  the  sanded  arena  of  the  world  as  in  the  period 
of  youth.  Perhaps,  also,  I  should  not  have  liked 
"  Der  arme  Heinrich  "  twenty  years  ago  as  well 
as  the  story  of  Heinrich  the  Bell-founder.  But 
now,  having  paid  my  money  (in  various  ways),  I 
rather  like  to  take  my  choice. 


SUDERMANN 

There  used  to  be,  in  Germany  at  least,  quite 
a  general  critical  opinion  which  placed  Sudermann 
as  a  dramatist  somewhere  between  Hauptmann 
and  Wildenbruch.  Hauptmann  was  the  delight 
of  the  advanced  guard  and  Wildenbruch  was  the 
favourite  of  the  conservatives ;  Sudermann  seemed 
to  be  somewhere  between  the  two.  As  far  as  one 
could  learn,  however,  he  was  not  admired  by  ad- 
vanced guard  and  conservative  alike,  but  on  the 
other  hand  was  condemned  at  least  by  the  ultras 
of  each  party.  One  side  called  him  a  compromiser 
and  conventionalist,  and  the  other  said  that  he 
merely  used  old  technique  for  exploiting  sensa- 
tional claptrap  in  the  way  of  so-called  ideas.  The 
more  advanced  said  that  his  dialogue  was  written 
for  schoolgirls,  the  conservatives  said  that  his 
material  was  light-headed  extravagance.  He  was, 
I  believe,  in  Germany  the  representative  of  "  Real- 
ismus,"  while  Hauptmann's  particular  lay  was 
**  Naturalismus,"  and  Wildenbruch's  I  don't  know 
just  what. 

For  myself  I  am  inclined  to  like  this  middle  po- 
63 


SUDErSiInN  63 

sition  and  to  think  of  his  plays  in  the  words  ap- 
plied to  that  unknown  dramatist  whose  works  were 
caviare  to  the  general  (not  that  Sudermann's  . 
are),  namely,  that  it  is  "  an  excellent  play,  well 
digested  in  the  scenes,  set  down  with  as  much 
modesty  as  cunning."  His  method  is,  compara- 
tively speaking,  as  wholesome  as  sweet,  and  by^ 
very  much  more  handsome  than  fine.  In  other 
words,  while  Sudermann's  plays  have  not  the  bril- 
liancy and  exhilaration  of  some  of  the  dramatists 
of  our  day,  in  form  at  least,  and  dialogue,  they  , 
are  well  put  together  and  written.  But  with  such 
matters  it  would  be  impertinent  for  me  to  meddle, 
for  one  would  hardly  expect  one  who  did  not  fol- 
low German  literature  pretty  closely  to  have  an 
opinion  on  these  things. 

Nor  are  they  much  in  my  line,  although  there 
is  or  may  be  a  good  deal  of  interest  in  them.  If 
one  have  read  more  or  less  of  the  literature  of  the 
last  twenty-five  years  in  the  various  parts  of  the 
world,  and  seen  pictures,  and  heard  music,  and 
gone  to  the  theatre,  there  is  fascination  in  these 
considerations  of  schools  and  tendencies  and  influ- 
ences, past,  present,  and  future.  There  is  some- 
thing inspiring  in  the  largeness  of  it.  And  cer- 
tainly, too,  there  is  a  sort  of  lyric  fervour  in  i 
Hauptmann  which  one  may  feel  the  lack  of  in 
Sudermann.     And  in  Wildenbruch  there  is  doubt- 


64  SUDERMANN 

less  something,  too  (only  I  can  never  quite  get  at 
it),  which  brings  out  by  contrast  the  qualities  of 
Sudermann.  And  it  must  be  inspiring  to  read 
"  Sturmgeselle  Sokrates  "  and  to  speculate  on  the 
future  of  the  German  drama. 

But  all  that,  in  itself,  seems  to  me  to  neglect 
so  much.  Sudermann  is  to  me  so  personal  a  writer  If 
that  when  I  see  a  play  of  his  or  read  one  (which 
is  much  more  often),  all  talk  of  influence  or  esti- 
mates falls  into  the  background,  while  my  sympa- 
thies and  emotions  are  more  wrung,  I  believe,  than 
by  any  of  the  others,  and  always  have  been.  Not 
that  it  is  everything  to  have  one's  sympathies  and 
emotions  wrung, — it  does  not  necessarily  mean  the 
highest  art, — but  it  surely  is  something,  and  a 
something  that  does  not  leave  one  free  to  con- 
-sider  questions  of  criticism.  Nor  can  it  be  to  me 
alone  that  the  plays  of  Sudermann  make  a  very 
personal  appeal.  Bernard  Shaw  can  undoubtedly 
show  us  hollow  places  in  our  modern  life  so  that  we 
recognise  the  truth  with  a  quick  thrill  of  pleasure. 
But  however  things  ought  to  be,  there  are  some 
things  that  thrill  us  now.  And  if  Sudermann  can- 
f  not,  or  does  not,  see  just  what  life  should  be,*  he 
)  certainly  can  give  us  sudden  realisations  of  what 
life  actually  is;  can  touch  us  to  the  quick  by  his 
poignant  moments  of  life  as  we  realise  it,  mo- 
ments in  which  we  cease  for  the  time  from  being  so- 


SUDERMANN  65 

cial  figures  and  relapse  into  individualism.  M.  Ros- 
tand takes  us  as  individuals  and  touches  us  by  an 
appreciation  of  select  moods,  of  our  higher  and 
better  moods;  he  presents  to  us,  in  his  curiously 
pessimistic  way,  moments  of  personality,  ideals  of 
possibility,  of  standing  rigidly  in  one's  own  self 
while  the  world  melts  and  crumbles  away  below. 
But  if  Sudermann  cannot  or  does  not  have  much 
to  say  about  the  ideal,  he  certainly  can  give  us 
keen  feelings  of  the  way  our  personality  comes 
in  contact  with  those  personalities  next  to  us,  who 
are  with  us  day  by  day,  enveloped,  save  for  one 
time  and  another,  in  the  impenetrable  reserve  thaty 
keeps  us  commonly  each  to  ourself . 

Sudermann's  motives  are  always,  in  his  most 
characteristic  plays  at  least,  combinations  of  those 
great  conflicts,  or  at  least  antagonisms  or  discords 
of  life,  that  every  one,  here  in  America  to  some  de- 
gree, as  well  as  in  Germany,  finds  among  the  con- 
ditions with  which  he  must  take  account.  Home 
and  the  outside  world,  the  old  generation  and  the 
new,  conventionalism  and  individualism,  personal- 
ity and  society,  faith  and  new  ideas,  art  and 
everyday  life — who  is  there  to-day  who  has  not 
some  personal  experience  of  such  things  as  these? 
Strife  or  conflict  may  be  too  stern  a  name  for 
them  in  ordinary  life;  but  surely  they  make  dis- 
harmonies,  incongruities,   and   often   worse.     Do 


i 


66  SUDERMANN 

they  make  up  more  of  our  life  to-day  than  they 
did  of  the  life  in  other  times?  I  cannot  say,  but 
certainly  they  make  much.  And  it  is  an  evidence 
fthsit  Sudermann  sees  life  truly,  in  its  larger  lines, 
fthat,  in  his  stronger  plays,  they  are  rarely  miss- 
ing. 

Not  that  these  motives  are  always  dragged  into 
his  dramas,  but  it  would  seem  as  if  these  ideas,  be- 
ing often  in  his  mind,  continually  influenced  his 
choice  of  subject  or  the  moulding  of  his  material. 
"  Die  Ehre,''  his  first  play,  has  much  the  same 
subject  as  Wildenbruch's  "Die  Haubenlerche '' : 
each  concerns  the  relations  of  a  rich  family  to  a 
poor  family  among  its  dependents ;  each  shows  the 
rich  offering  benefits  for  a  return  in  flesh  and 
blood  and  honour.  There  are  strong  situations 
in  each  play  and  both  were  successful  on  the  stage. 
But  Wildenbruch's  play  is  thin  and  conventional 
compared  to  Sudermann's,  on  account  of  the  con- 
flicting motives  in  "  Die  Ehre  "  to  which  one  easily 
finds  an  answer  in  one's  own  life.  Robert,  who 
has  been  ten  years  in  India,  accustomed  to  a 
larger,  more  modern  life,  comes  back  to  a  re- 
stricted, old-fashioned,  very  lower  middle-class 
family;  Alma,  who  has  stayed  at  home,  has  been 
continually  escaping  from  the  annoyances  of 
parental  control  to  the  temptations  of  the  free, 
half-bohemian  circle  to  which  she  finds  her  way* 


SUDERMANN  67 

It  IS  all  the  same  sort  of  thing  that  we  may  easily 
see  around  us ;  it  does  not  take  particularly  strik- 
ing forms  as  we  see  it,  but  it  would  if  a  dramatist 
should  deal  with  it.  Robert  comes  back  from  the 
freedom  of  his  independent  life  to  the  pettiness 
of  his  old  father  and  mother;  so  do  hundreds  of 
boys  and  girls  come  back  from  college,  say,  to 
the  farm.  Alma,  who  chafes  under  the  restric- 
tions of  the  elder  generation,  wishes  to  seek  the 
glittering  show  of  pleasure  in  her  own  way;  and 
we  have  examples  of  that,  too,  from  the  farm  to 
the  city,  or  from  the  house  to  the  street.  It  is 
no  great  exhibition  of  genius  to  have  noted  so 
much,  but  it  i«,  I  think,  a  piece  of  genius  to  con- 
ceive an  action  that  shall  be  a  focus  for  half  a 
dozen  such  motives,  to  carry  it  on  by  characters 
that  shall  continually  represent  them  to  us,  and 
to  express  them  and  comment  on  them  by  con- 
tinual epigram  or  chance  remark  that  strike  us 
surely  and  often  remain  in  the  mind. 

Just  what  the  action  is  seems  to  me  of  lesser 
importance,  if  only  it  be  interesting.  "  Die 
Ehre  "  was  a  successful  play,  and  the  critics,  as 
a  whole,  paid  very  little  attention  to  what  I  have 
been  speaking  of.  Thus  Bulthaupt,  who  is  rep- 
resentative enough,  criticises  the  play  severely 
because  of  Graf  Trast's  disquisitions  on  Honour. 
Now  that  turns  the  play  into  what  is  hideously 


68  SUDERMANN 

<;alled  A  problem-play.  And  further,  it  makes  the 
play  something  that  we,  over  here,  cannot  easily 
get  hold  of,  for  our  ideas  on  Honour  are  different 
in  many  respects  from  those  current  in  Germany, 
and  though  we  may  understand  their  feeling  well 
enough,  and  Sudermann's  criticisms  of  it,  yet  it 
<;an  hardly  be  a  matter  which  we  shall  feel  very 
keenly.  Most  Americans,  I  fancy,  would  agree 
with  Graf  Trast — ^he  is  meant  to  be  a  man  who 
had  seen  the  world — in  his  view  that  Honour  dif- 
fers with  different  people,  being  one  thing  in  one 
nation  or  class  and  something  else  in  another,  and 
that  if  conventional  honour  were  dispensed  with 
in  favour  of  duty,  the  world  would  be  quite  as 
well  off. 

But  is  this  sort  of  speculation  the  play?  Is  a 
play  the  resolution  (however  good)  of  such  a 
probkm?  Hardly;  here  is  a  play  of  men  and 
women  and  the  tides  of  life.  Surely  such  things 
are  more  interesting  than  questions  and  problems, 
certainly  more  widespread. 

Whether  they  are  or  not,  this  may  be  said :  the 
same  discords  or  disharmonies  of  life  that  one 
observes  in  "  Die  Ehre "  are  to  be  seen  in 
"  Sodom's  Ende."  It  is  true  that  this  play 
ostensibly  differs  from  the  former;  that  play 
offers  us,  according  to  the  critics,  a  criticism  of 
current  conceptions  of  honour,  and  this,  they  tell 


SUDERMANN  69 

us,  IS  a  criticism  of  some  current  conceptions  of 
artistic  life. 

But  if  one  do  not  think  of  such  things,  one  finds 
that  here  too  we  have  personaUties  and  the  cur- 
rents of  life  of  our  time.  Here  Is  the  cramped 
home  of  the  ruined  proprietor  turned  milk-in- 
spector, and  the  phosphorescent  rottenness  of  his 
son  Willy,  a  notable  figure  in  the  great  (Berlin) 
world  of  art  and  ideas.  Here  are  the  simple  con- 
ceptions of  the  old  people  and  the  younger  but 
decadent  world  of  the  critics,  and  those  who  catch 
up  their  words.  Here  is  the  dim  but  deeply 
rooted  conception  of  duty  and  the  half-acknow- 
ledged sophistries  of  those  who  think  their  own 
thoughts  and  live  their  own  lives.  Perhaps  the 
play  is  not  so  broad  as  "  Die  Ehre,"  but  it  is 
stronger  in  its  action,  for  each  play  of  course 
has  some  action  which  finds  its  course  in  the  inter- 
action of  the  forces  of  the  world  which  it  por- 
trays. Its  chief  figure  is  more  striking  than 
Robert  in  "  Die  Ehre."  Willy  Janikow  is  not  so 
much  a  character  as  a  personality.  The  artist  of 
promise,  son  of  parents  whose  Ufe  is  now  of  the 
hardest,  the  man  who  has  come  to  success  in  a 
world  where  he  cannot  keep  his  head,  loved  by 
so  many  and  such  a  hard  master  to  himself,  I 
remember  him  well  sitting  in  the  fading  daylight 
in  his  father's  house,  which  he  is  about  to  leave, 


70  SUDERMANN 

murmuring  "  Reinheit,  Reinheit."  I  remember 
him  well  as  he  gathers  himself  together  in  his 
studio,  but  too  late,  with  the  cry  of  "  Arbeit ! " 
just  as  the  curtain  falls.  Somewhat  conventional 
/that  is,  without  a  doubt ;  Sudermann  uses  conven- 
/  tional  modes  of  expression  in  a  way  Hauptmann 
would  never  do,  and  that  seems  to  take  away  from 
his  power  with  many.  But  I  do  not  think  that 
it  stands  in  the  way  of  effect;  it  does  not  seem  to 
stand  in  the  way  of  sincerity. 

But  it  is  in  "  Heimat "  that  all  these  motives 
have  freest  play.  As  it  is  given  in  English,  the 
play  is  always  called  "  Magda,"  and  that  is  some- 
thing of  a  mistake.  And  the  character  of  Magda 
has  attracted  the  greatest  actresses  of  our  day, — 
Bernhardt,  Duse,  Mrs.  Campbell,  Mrs.  Fiske, — 
and  that,  though  not  a  mistake,  is  something  that 
rather  veils  the  true  nature  of  the  play.  Each 
of  those  powerful  actresses  was  so  intent  on  her 
rendering  of  the  principal  woman  in  the  play  that 
she  gave  no  great  pains  to  the  presentation  of  the 
play  as  a  whole — perhaps,  indeed,  did  not  under- 
stand it. 

Curiously  enough,  a  theatrical  critic  of  great 
ability  showed  not  long  ago  how  one  may  readily 
see  one  thing  so  well  that  he  sees  others  very  ill 
or  not  at  all.  "  In  the  discussions  the  play  first 
called  down  upon  us,"  he  remarked  on  seeing  Mrs. 


SUDERMANN  71 

Fiske  as  Magda,  "  it  was  assumed  that  it  dealt  I 
with  the  question  of  parental  authority.  ...  It 
was  also  assumed  that  it  dealt  with  the  problem 
of  the  new  woman.  ...  I  wish  to  suggest  that 
this  view  is  very  short-sighted.  Beneath  the 
transitory  details  of  the  play  it  seems  to  me  that 
there  is  a  motive  which  is  eternal."  Certainly 
there  is,  and  the  only  thing  noteworthy  in  this 
remark  is  that  it  is  a  suggestion  resulting  from 
"  a  growing  suspicion."  While  seeing  Duse  and 
Bernhardt  and  Mrs.  Fiske,  the  suspicion  grew 
upon  his  mind  that  this  play  was  not  the  exploita- 
tion of  a  current  "  problem,"  but  that  it  had  a 
motive  of  eternal  interest.  At  first  he  missed  the 
real  things  in  the  play.  That  may  have  been 
because  he  was  a  theatrical  critic,  and  naturally 
most  interested  in  the  acting.  But  Magda  is  not 
the  only  character  in  the  play;  she  is  the  most 
brilliant,  but  probably  the  pastor,  Heffterdingt, 
was  the  author's  chief  effort.  And  the  play  is 
not  specifically  about  the  new  woman  and  parental 
authority.  It  presents  to  us,  as  "  Die  Ehre  " 
does,  the  contrast  between  the  provincial  life  and| 
the  big  world.  It  shows  us,  as  "  Sodom's  Ende  " 
does,  the  conflict  between  the  quiet  virtues  of  home 
and  the  brilliant  temptations  of  art.  It  shows  us, 
as  "  Es  lebe  das  Leben  "  does,  the  difference  be- 
tween fulfilling  one's  own  personality  and  follow- 


72  SUDERMANN 

ing  the  normal  and  narrow  Ideas  of  duty.  Nor 
is  that  all;  it  does  show  us  paternal  authority, 
but  that  is  only  the  German  form  taken  by  the 
constant  difference  between  the  older  generation 
and  the  newer.  It  does  show  us  the  new  woman, 
but  that  is  only  a  current  form  of  the  difference 
between  new  ideas  and  conservatism  or  conven- 
tionaUsm,  as  you  may  choose  to  call  it.  In  one 
situation  as  a  focus  are  all  these  lines  of  life.  Nor 
is  it  in  the  situation  only — the  return  of  the 
brilliant  prodigal  daughter — that  these  motives 
are  implicit.  They  are  everywhere  Indicated  in 
the  lines  of  the  characters. 

"  Modern  ideas,"  says  the  old  soldier,  "  oh, 
pshaw!  I  know  them.  But  come  into  the  quiet 
homes  where  are  bred  brave  soldiers  and  virtuous 
wives.  There  you'll  hear  no  talk  about  heredity, 
no  arguments  about  individuality,  no  scandalous 
gossip.  There  modern  ideas  have  no  foothold,  for 
it  is  there  that  the  life  and  the  strength  of  the 
Fatherland  abide.  Look  at  this  home!  There  is 
no  luxury, — hardly  even  what  you  call  good  taste, 
— faded  rugs,  birchen  chairs,  old  pictures;  and 
yet,  when  you  see  the  beams  of  the  western  sun 
pour  through  the  white  curtains,  and  lie  with  such 
a  loving  touch  on  the  old  room,  does  not  something 
say  to  you,  '  Here  dwells  true  happiness  ?  '  " 

And  when   Magda   looks   about  her,   "  Every- 


SUDERMANN  Td 

thing's  just  the  same/'  says  she.  "  Not  a  speck  of 
dust  has  moved."  And  her  mother  answers,  solic- 
itously, "  I  hope  that  you  won't  find  any  specks 
of  dust." 

And  when  Magda  speaks  to  her  sister,  *^  Come 
here — close — tell  me  the  truth — ^has  it  never  en- 
tered your  mind  to  cast  this  whole  network  of  pre* 
caution  and  respect  away  from  you,  and  to  go 
with  the  man  you  love  out  and  away — anywhere — 
it  doesn't  matter  much — and  as  you  lie  quietly  on 
his  breast,  to  hurl  back  a  scornful  laugh  at  the 
whole  world  which  has  sunk  behind  you  ?  " 

"  No,  Magda,"  says  Marie,  "  I  never  feel  so." 

One  might  copy  out  pages  of  quotations,  so  v 
remarkable  is  the  way  in  which  the  action  of  char- 
acter upon  character  brings  out  motives  that  are/ 
vital.  I  will  confess  that  I  hardly  know  whether 
all  this  is  precisely  what  one  would  call  dramatic. 
But  that  is  something  that  must  be  put  aside  for 
the  moment. 

These  things  should  touch  people  deeply.    They  j 
are  not  merely  interesting  problems.     Few  of  us  | 
ever  consider  the  problem  of  the  new  woman  or  | 
of  parental  authority  with  the  idea  of  finding  any    j 
answer  to  it.     But  here  is  a  home  with  good  things 
and  stupid  things  and  silly  things,  doubtless,  as 
many  other  homes  have,  and  to  it  comes  this  glori- 
ous outcast  who  has  not  been  feeding  on  swine's 


74  SUDERMANN 

husks,  but  has  reached  fame  and  acquired  fortune 
and  wealth  and  an  immense  retinue.  In  just  that 
form  we  shall  probably  never  know  that  motive, 
but  every  man  whose  wife  and  daughters  are  con- 
stantly in  the  world  of  society,  and  every  woman 
whose  husband  spends  his  evenings  at  the  club,  and 
whose  boy  goes  out  on  the  streets,  will  be  able  to 
feel  it.  And  so  it  is  with  the  rest.  As  problems, 
we  have  no  earthly  concern  with  them.  In  the 
special  forms  which  they  take  in  Sudermann's 
/  plays  we  have  not  much  to  do  with  them,  and  often 
yiothing  at  all,  but  essentially  we  know  them  and 
can  respond  to  them. 

And  that  the  drama  can  present  them  is  evident 
from  these  plays.  That  they  are  essentially  dra- 
;  (^  matic  material  is  another  matter ;  it  would  seem 
as  if  the  novel  gave  a  wider  opportunity.  Suder- 
mann  is  a  novelist  as  well  as  a  dramatist,  and  an 
\  exceptionally  powerful  one.  I  am  not  familiar 
with  all  his  works,  but  in  "  Frau  Sorge  " — the 
best  known  of  his  novels  on  this  side  the  water — 
it  certainly  appears  that  he  does  not  use  the  ad- 
vantage that  he  seems  to  have  to  present  largely 
and  fully  the  dominating  currents  of  human  life. 
Instead  of  so  doing  he  seems  to  narrow  his  grasp 
to  one  powerful  motive.  It  may  be  that  the  novel- 
ist, who  must  work  so  much  by  description  where 
the    dramatist    can    work    by    presentation,    the 


SUDERMANN  76 

temptation  is  to  confine  oneself.     However  that  be 
— and  it  is  no  present  business  of  mine — the  im- 
pression of  Sudermann's  plays  is  certainly  that  of  l 
a  world  of  active  impulses  and  of  human  figures  J 
living  and  moving  therein* 

It  has  been  said,  however,  and  perhaps  it  seems 
obvious,  that  Sudermann's  dramatic  theme  is  "  in 
all  his  pieces  the  one  single  conflict  in  which  free  ) 
personality  stands  with  the  exactions  of  society,"  • 
and  that  "  he  never  allows  it  to  be  doubtful  that 
he  stands  on  the  side  of  personality  and  that  he  is 
a  champion  of  its  rights."  If  this  were  the  case, 
it  would  take  away  the  chief  element  of  his  power. 
It  is  true  that  not  a  few  dramatists  in  Germany 
as  well  as  elsewhere,  and  other  men  of  letters  as 
well  as  dramatists,  have  presented  of  late  the 
rights  of  personality  as  against  the  pretensions 
of  society  or  some  kind  of  society.  It  has  always 
been  a  favourite  motive,  for  artists  are  always 
men  of  personality,  and  they  are  apt  enough  to 
present  its  claims.  But  in  the  present  generation 
the  idea  has  been  more  common  than  before.  "  To 
live  one's  own  life"  has  become  one  of  the  catch- 
words of  modem  literature.  Merely  among 
modern  German  dramatists  we  can  see  the  motive 
in  Hauptmann  and  in  Max  Halbe,  in  each  very 
tellingly  presented,  and  we  can  see  it  also  in  Suder- 
mann.     But  I  cannot  think  that  it  is  his  only  dra- 


76  SUDERMANN 

matic  theme,  even  his  pre-eminent  interest.  It 
occurs  in  his  plays,  but  always  In  connection  with 
other  motives.  In  "  Die  Ehre  "  there  is  no  doubt 
that  Robert  and  Leonora  resolve  finally  to  rescue 
themselves  from  a  world  in  which  they  cannot 
draw  moral  breath.  Graf  Trast,  too,  had  long 
ago  emancipated  himself  from  the  follies  under 
which  he  had  grown  up,  and  in  the  play  he  appears 
as  the  representative  of  freedom  of  thought 
against  the  conventional  correctness  of  social  eti- 
quette. And  Sudermann  here  is  on  the  side  of 
those  who  honour  duty  more  than  the  arbitrary 
dictum  of  society,  as  poets  and  sane-minded  people 
have  been  for  a  good  while.  But  poor,  silly  little 
Alma  in  the  play  is  also  a  disciple  of  personality : 
she  also  wants  to  live  her  own  life  as  much  as  any 
girl  who  went  into  a  shop  instead  of  a  family  be- 
cause she  wanted  freedom.  She  wants  to  do  as 
she  pleases  and  is  bored  to  death  with  the  restric- 
tions which  her  grave  brother's  ideas  of  decency 
would  lay  upon  her.  And  with  Alma  the  author 
shows  no  more  sympathy  than  one  would  naturally 
have  for  a  charming  and  wrong-headed  young 
woman. 

Nor  in  his  next  play  was  he  particularly  the 
champion  of  personality.  The  idea,  the  antith- 
esis, is  more  important  in  "  Sodom's  Ende  "  than 
it  is  in  some  other  plays,  but  I  should  not  call  it 


SUDERMANN  77 

the  main  motive.  Willy  Janikow  is  a  man  of  per- 
sonality ;  but  what  is  the  society  with  which  he  is 
in  conflict?  He  is  not  in  conflict  with  the  society 
which  purchases  his  picture  and  prevents  his  paint- 
ing any  other;  if  he  were,  Sudermann  might  be 
"  on  his  side  and  fighting  for  his  rights."  The 
society  that  he  is  in  conflict  with  is  the  society 
represented  by  the  household  of  his  father  and 
mother,  and  for  his  conflict  with  this  society 
Sudermann  does  not  ask  the  support  of  our  sym- 
pathy. 

In  "  Heimat  "  there  need  be  no  question  that  the  \ 
idea  of  personality  is  pre-eminent;  the  very  fact    | 
that  so  many  great  actresses  have  liked  the  part    | 
of  Magda  shows  that  clearly  enough.    But  though    I 
Magda  is  the  protagonist  of  personality  in  its    ^ 
strife  against  the  demands  of  society,  yet  even  here 
we  cannot  say  that  Sudermann  leaves  no  doubt  asN 
to  his  own  opinion.     So  far  as  the  drama  is  con-M 
cemed  he  has  no  opinion :  he  lets  each  person  speak  <| 
as  he  ought  and  do  what  he  naturally  would  do.  || 
But  the  play  throws  its  weight  as  much  on  the  side 
of  society  in  the  person  of  Pastor  HefFterdingt  as 
it  does  on  the  side  of  personality  as  represented  by 
Magda.    And  wherever  Suderman  be  champion  he 
^allows  nobility  to  the  words  of  the  pastor « 

Magda.  "  And    your    calling — does    not    that 
bring  joy  enough? 


78  SUDERMANN 

Pastor.  Yes,  thank  God,  it  does.  But  if  one 
takes  it  sincerely,  he  cannot  well  live  his  own  life 
in  it.  .  .  At  least  I  cannot.  One  cannot  exult 
in  the  vigour  of  his  personality — that  is  what 
you  mean,  is  it  not.?  And  then,  I  look  into  so  many 
hearts — and  one  sees  there  too  many  wounds  that 
one  cannot  heal,  ever  to  be  very  blithe." 

If  Sudermann  hold  a  brief  for  personality,  he  is 
a  very  honourable  opponent  and  allows  the  cham- 
pions of  duty  and  of  the  rights  of  society  a  very 
fair  chance.  Even  in  despondency  the  Pastor  is 
fine,  as  when  he  says  to  the  woman  who  rejected  him 
long  before :  "  Yes,  I  have  had  to  deaden  much 
within  my  soul.  My  peace  is  as  the  peace  of  a 
corpse." 

In  fact,  as  one  reads  the  play  undominated  by 
the  power  of  some  great  actress,  one  may  readily 
feel  that  Sudermann  is  the  spokesman  for  a  well- 
ordered  life  in  common  rather  than  for  anarchy. 
In  fact,  that  gave  the  play  its  name. 

When  we  come  to  "  Es  lebe  das  Leben  "  there 
we  need  not  deny  that  the  main  theme  is  the  right 
of  personality  and  there  without  doubt  Suder- 
mann gives  us  an  idea  of  his  position  in  the  figure 
of  Beate.  And  here  he  gives  us  the  idea  that  there 
OTe  natures  that  have  some  excuse  for  transcending 
social  law.  Still  this  is  but  one  play :  it  was  from 
a  criticism  of  it  that  I  drew  the  remark  quoted 


SUDERMANN  79 

above,  and  I  fancy  that  the  influence  of  this  par- 
ticular piece  was  enough  to  colour  a  little  the  crit- 
ic's recollection. 

Sudermann  does  not  carry  a  brief  for  individ-\ 
uality  as  his  chief  stock  in  trade.     That  is  one  of 
the  things   that   I   like   about  him,     Hauptmann 
rather  does  so,  but  Sudermann's  view  of  life  is 
much  larger  than  one  motive  merely,  and  it  is  that 
which  gives  the  exhilaration  to  the  reading  of  his 
plays,  for  it  is  only  the  self-absorbed  mind  that 
views  the  world  as  a  struggle  between  personality 
and  society.    One  can  certainly  analyse  the  matter 
so  that  it  looks  as  if  it  were.     For  instance,  one 
antagonism  that   appears   often  in   Sudermann's 
plays,  because  it  appears  often  in  life,  is  the  oppo- 
sition between  old  and  young,  between  one  generar. 
tion  and  the  next.     It  is  one  of  the  commonest 
causes  of  misunderstanding.     And  to  the  young 
man  or  the  young  woman  this  matter  looks  as  if  it 
were  the  great  case  of  Personality  vs.  Society.    But 
it  rarely  is.     The  young  man  only  thinks  that  he 
wars  with  society  because  society  is  represented  in 
his  mind  by  the  precepts  and  powers  of  the  elder 
generation.     If  the  children  could  get  the  upper 
hand,   as  in   "  Lilliput  Levee,"   our  individualist 
would  find  that  everybody  was  on  his  side,  and  that 
he  could  live  his  own  life  as  much  as  he  wished,  if 
it  did  not  interfere  with  anybody  else.     The  two 


80  SUDERMANN 

oppositions  are  based  on  quite  different  sets  of 
fact.  The  antagonism  of  personality  to  society 
is  one  of  the  feelings  absolutely  necessary  to  th( 
preservation  of  individual  life,  namely  of  life  itself. 
The  very  fact  that  a  man  must  feed  himself  first 
before  he  can  be  of  use  to  society  shows  that  there 
must  be  something  of  this  self-assertive  element. 
In  some  natures  it  will  be  more  powerful,  in  some 
less ;  there  will  never  be  an  agreement  for  it  or 
against  it.  But  the  opposition  between  the  older 
and  the  younger  generation  is  a  wholly  different 
feeling  and  arises,  so  far  as  the  older  generation 
is  concerned,  from  the  conservatism  that  grows  on 
a  man  as  he  grows  older,  from  the  increase  in  wis- 
dom and  knowledge  of  results,  and  from  a  lack 
of  sympathy  that  comes  partly  from  a  poor  mem- 
ory and  partly  from  absorption  in  work.  Given 
these  characteristics  of  mankind  as  it  grows  older 
and  given  also  progress  in  the  world,  then  you  must 
have  opposition  of  some  sort  between  those  who 
are  just  coming  on  the  stage  and  those  who  are 
already  there.  In  just  the  same  way  we  could  see 
that  the  motive  of  personality  in  strife  with  so- 
ciety combines  easily  with  other  motives  which 
Sudermann  observes  in  the  world  and  presents  in 
his  plays.  But  they  are  not  all  one  motive;  they 
are  many :  probably  more  than  I  have  noted. 
What  can  we  say  is  the  effect  of  such  motives, 


SUDERMANN  81 

how  IS  it  with  us  when  we  have  them  impressed 
strongly  upon  us?  Is  it  not  exactly  the  effect  of 
the  tragic  figure?  The  great  tragic  figure  affects 
us  as  the  tragedy  of  Rome  affected  Lord  Byron. 
"  What  are  our  woes  and  suff ranee  ?  "  By  com- 
parison with  great  misfortunes  of  general  appeal 
and  nobly  born,  our  own  griefs  and  miseries  and 
complaints  against  fortune  calm  down  for  a  time. 
But  here  is  something  different.  Sudermann  has 
no  great  tragic  figures — at  least  not  in  these 
plays.  Willy  Janikow,  it  is  true,  expires  at  the 
last  moment,  but  we  feel  that  it  is  only  the  neces- 
sary result  of  all  that  we  have  seen,  nor  Is  he  ever 
presented  in  such  a  way  as  to  rouse  all  our  sym- 
pathy. In  "  Heimat,"  Magda  does  not  die  at  all : 
she  probably  goes  back  to  her  brilliant  life.  It  is 
the  old  Colonel  who  dies,  full  of  years,  retired  from 
active  work,  as  ready  to  go  as  any  of  us.  Beate 
is  a  tragic  figure,  but  as  such  rather  an  excep- 
tion. 

Sudermann's  power  Is  not  the  power  of  tragedy  \ 
as  is  M.  Rostand's.     He  makes  a  powerful  im- 
pression, but  it  is  stimulating  rather  than  calm- 
ing, possibly  intellectual  rather  than  emotional,  on^ 
the  whole.     Here  is  life,  we  say,  complex,  conflict- \ 
ing  in  its  currents,  unharmonious.     It  takes  a  man 
to  keep  afloat  and  pointed  in  the  right  direction.  X 
And  with  that  we  straighten  up  a  bit  (morally)  ^  j 


82  SUDERMANN 

and  take  a  little  more  credit  to  ourselves  for  our 
handling  of  such  a  matter.  Then  when  a  tight  nip 
comes  we  can  regard  the  matter  a  little  better  from 
the  eye  of  reason.  If  it  be  one  thing  to  perceive 
(the  truth  of  the  artist  and  another  to  be  moved  by 
his  power  as  a  dramatist,  Sudermann  gives  us 
chiefly  opportunities  for  the  former.  The  latter 
is  not  wanting  in  our  experience  of  his  work,  any 
more  than  it  is  with  a  good  many  other  lesser  men 
who  write  plays.  But  it  is  in  the  former  direction 
that  he  is  pre-eminent. 


PINERO 

I  SHALL,  never,  in  all  probability,  be  one  to  den^r 
that  Mr.  Pinero  is  a  consummate  playwright.  As 
to  whether  he  be  a  great  dramatist,  whether  his 
plays  be  literature,  whether  he  can  be  said  to  offer 
to  the  world  a  "  criticism  of  life,"  whether  he  have 
a  message — these  are  points  on  which  I  can  imag- 
ine some  discussion,  can  imagine  even  taking  part 
.in  it,  but  I  cannot  readily  think  of  a  dispute  as  to 
his  craftsmanship  in  stage  technique. 

One  reason  for  this,  I  am  willing  to  admit,  is 
that  I  have  but  a  very  hazy  idea  as  to  what  stage 
technique  is.  Mr.  Ho  wells — who,  to  be  sure,  will 
not  be  accepted  as  authority  by  all  who  are  learned 
on  this  point — Mr.  Howells,  or  at  least  one  of  his 
characters,  says  in  "  The  Story  of  a  Play  "  that 
there  is  no  such  thing.  They  talk  about  a  know- 
ledge of  the  stage,"  says  Maxwell,  "  as  if  it  were 
a  difficult  science,  instead  of  a  very  simple  piece  of 
mechanism  whose  limitations  and  possibilities  any 
one  may  seize  at  a  glance.  All  that  their  know- 
ledge of  it  comes  to  is  claptrap,  pure  and  simple. 
They  brag  of  its  resources,  and  tell  you  the  car- 


84  PINERO 

penter  can  do  anything  you  want  nowadays,  but  If 
you  attempt  anything  outside  of  their  tradition, 
they  are  frightened.  They  think  that  their  exits 
and  entrances  are  great  matters  and  that  they 
must  come  on  with  such  a  speech,  and  go  off  with 
another;  but  It  Is  not  of  the  least  Importance  how 
they  come  or  go.  If  they  have  something  Interest- 
ing to  say  or  do."  So  the  disappointed  playwright 
to  his  admiring  wife.  I  have  never  been  quite  sure 
whether  that  were  Mr.  Howells'  own  view  or  merely 
the  result  of  his  observation  of  literary  men  who 
write  for  the  stage.  I  presume  it  may  be  the  lat- 
ter. I  have  a  considerable  interest  in  stage  tech- 
nique and  would  enjoy  of  all  things  having  its  fine 
points  exhibited  to  me  by  one  who  knew.  But  the 
professors  of  that  science  whom  I  have  known  have 
always  seemed  rather  too  general  and  glittering 
for  my  academic  mind  to  follow  them.  I  notice  of 
stagecraft,  however,  that  it  Is  esteemed  of  great 
importance  on  one  side  of  the  footlights  and  of 
none  at  all  on  the  other.  In  this  respect  it  some- 
what resembles  the  technique  of  painting,  as  Mr. 
Henry  Arthur  Jones  pointed  out  a  year  or  so  ago 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  although  he  grounds 
his  opinion  on  ve^-y  different  reasons. 

I  know  of  no  good  treatise  on  the  subject,  and 
it  is,  in  fact,  rather  hard  to  find  out  just  what  play- 
wrights and  actors  consider  the  really  important 


PINERO  85 

things  in  the  plays  they  present.  I  have  noticed 
one  or  t\^o  little  things  that  may  serve  to  give 
something  of  a  notion.  In  Miss  Clara  Morris's 
very  interesting  "  Life  on  the  Stage  "  are  one  or 
two  bits  of  mention  of  the  actor's  art,  of  which 
the  following  is  the  most  suggestive: 

"  Mr.  Daly  wanted  me  to  get  across  the  stage, 
so  that  I  should  be  out  of  hearing  distance  of  two 
of  the  gentlemen  .  .  .  [There  were  many  ex- 
pedients for  crossing,  but  none  pleased  Mr. 
Daly,  until  Miss  Morris  suggested  a  smelling- 
bottle]  .  .  .  He  brightened  quickly — clouded 
over  even  more  quickly :  '  Y-e-e-s !  N-o-o !  at  least 
if  it  had  never  appeared  before.  But  let  me  see — 
Miss  Morris,  you  must  carry  that  smelling-bottle 
in  the  preceding  scene — and,  yes,  I'll  just  put  in 
a  line  in  your  part,  making  you  ask  some  one  to 
hand  it  to  you — that  will  nail  attention  to  it,  you 
see!  Then  in  this  scene,  when  you  leave  these 
people  and  cross  the  room  to  get  your  smelling- 
bottle  from  the  mantel,  it  will  be  a  perfectly  nat- 
ural action  on  your  part,  and  will  give  the  men  a 
chance  of  explanation  and  warning.'  " 

Notice  that  new  line  in  her  part, — that  shows 
necessities  and  possibilities  which  Shakespeare  did 
not  have  to  consider.  Not  so  with  the  following, 
which  comes  from  an  interview  granted  by  Mr. 
Stephen  Phillips  to  a  newspaper  man: 


^ 


86  PINERO 

"When  I  read  *  Herod '  to  [Mr.  Beerbohm] 
Tree,  he  was  at  the  outset  bored,  sceptical,  and 
wanted  nothing  so  much  as  to  get  through  with  it. 
Gradually  he  grew  more  and  more  interested  and 
excited,  until  I  came  to  the  passage  where  trum- 
pets are  heard  in  the  distance.  '  Ha ! '  he  said  to 
his  secretary,  *  you  see  the  reason  of  that  ?  '  Then 
he  turned  to  me,  and  said :  *  Have  you  ever  been  on 
the  stage  ?  '  He  did  not  know  I  had  ever  been  an 
actor,  but  he  divined  it  in  that  one  touch."  So  far 
Mr.  Phillips  in  the  interview:  the  interviewer, 
R.  D.  B.,  continues,  "  I  repeat  that  if  it  had  not 
been  for  his  intimate  knowledge  of  stagecraft,  his 
career  as  a  playwright  might  have  been  cut  short 
right  then  and  there,  for  Beerbohm  Tree  vows 
that  it  was  just  this  thing  that  made  him  accept 
the  young  man  as  a  coming  great  poet." 

The  last  remark,  if  true,  throws  floods  of  light 
upon  our  question,  as  well  as  upon  Mr.  Tree's 
capabilities  as  a  critic  of  poetry. 

Of  this  sort  of  stagecraft,  I  fancy  Mr.  Pinero 
must  be  a  master,  of  the  things  belonging  wholly 
to  the  stage  and  necessary  to  make  a  play  go ;  the 
thousand  and  one  little  things,  which  if  tbey  are 
perfect.,  no  on:  notices.  Of  course  the  smelling- 
bottle  and  the  trumpets  are  merely  accidents ;  they 
may  even  never  have  existed;  but  they  serve  to 
illustrate  a  kind  of  thing  that  is  obviously  of  im- 


PINERO  87 

portance  in  any  art,  even  though  it  is  rarely  un- 
derstood, quite  naturally,  by  a  majority  of  those 
who  enjoy  that  art.  We  need  no  more  inquire  into 
it  than  into  the  details  of  an  actor's  make-up. 

Of  a  more  important  kind  of  stagecraft,  too, — 
which  can  be  dimly  perceived  even  by  one  so  stage- 
blind  as  a  literary  critic, — Mr.  Pinero  is  a  master. 
The  management  of  incidents  and  events  so  as  to 
bring  out  strongly  and  rightly  the  situations  and 
the  characters — of  this  art  Pinero  is  master  as  well 
as  of  the  other.  I  have  generally  considered  the 
best  example  of  his  skill  to  be  the  moment  in  "  The 
Profligate  "  when  Janet  Preece  sees  Dunstan  Ren- 
shaw  and  Lord  Dangers,  but  perhaps  something 
from  "  Letty  "  will  be  better  remembered.  In  the 
third  act  of  that  play  Mr.  Letchmere  (excellent 
name — a  corruption  probably  of  Lechmore)  and 
his  sister  are  good  representatives  of  a  fine  old 
crusted  family  who  are  beginning  to  get  afraid  of 
themselves  as  being  a  little  too  representative. 
Each  is  engaged  in  an  affair  that  shows  signs  of 
going  a  bit  too  far.  Mrs.  Crosbie  resolves  to 
break  hers  off;  there  is  to  be  a  good-bye  dinner 
with  Coppy,  the  future  co-respondent ;  and  she  in- 
vites to  it  her  brother,  who  is  devotedly  fond  of  her, 
begging  him  to  stick  to  her  that  evening  and  see 
that  she  does  not  get  a  chance  to  be  run  away  with 
by  her  emotions,  and  Coppy.    So  he  does :  he  dines 


88  PINERO 

with  them  and  they  have  a  very  pleasant  little 
dinner,  and  then  just  as  they  are  about  to  leave 
the  restaurant,  it  appears  that  the  room  is  to  be 
taken  by  Mr.  Mandeville,  who  is  celebrating  his 
engagement  to  Letty.  Now  Letty  is  the  young 
lady  with  whom  Mr.  Letehmere  has  been  carrying 
on :  it  was  rather  supposed  that  he  was  not  going 
to  see  her  again,  now  that  she  was  about  to  marry 
nicely  "  in  her  own  class."  He  does,  however,  see 
her,  is  asked  to  stay  a  moment  for  a  glass  of  wine, 
does  so,  arranges  to  run  away  with  her,  but  for  the 
moment  neglects  his  sister,  who  grasps  the  oppor- 
tunity of  being  herself.  That  seems  to  me  excel- 
lent. The  forces  that  move  these  people  are  inex- 
orable. Letehmere  loves  his  sister  and  wants  her 
to  be  better  than  he,  an  absolutely  necessary  ele- 
ment in  family  feeling.  He  will  do  anything  for 
her  to  make  her  so, — anything  except  not  loving 
some  one  else's  sister.  So  that  situation  is  excel- 
lent. So  is  the  next.  Having  persuaded  Letty  to 
leave  her  awful  fiance  for  him,  and  while  very  hap- 
pily planning  with  her  a  delightful  future,  he  sud- 
denly learns  that  the  expected  has  happened:  his 
sister  has  flown  or  rather  flitted.  He  loves  his 
sister,  certainly,  but  he  feels  strongly  that  she  is 
in  a  manner  disgraced.  In  the  momentary  softness 
of  heart,  Letty  recovers  herself  and  regains  terra 
firma.     She   subsequently   marries   "  in   her   own 


PINERO  89 

class ''  and  is  very  happy.  Letchmere,  I  am  afraid, 
goes  to  the  dogs.  It  takes  time  to  tell  these  com- 
plicated things,  but  they  are  certainly  fine  pieces 
of  work. 

Or  take  the  second  act  of  "  Iris  " — the  end  of 
it — another  masterpiece  in  its  kind.  Maldonado 
has  left  Iris  his  cheque-book,  which  she  scorns  to 
use,  though  she  does  not  give  it  back.  But  an  old 
friend  in  trouble  appeals  to  her ;  Iris  wants  money 
to  help  her  out  and  signs  a  cheque.  She  is  in  fact 
drawn  into  the  power  of  Maldonado  by  her  very 
generosity;  that  almost  certain  quality  in  easy, 
pleasure-loving  characters,  sometimes  the  only  re- 
deeming quality,  delivers  her  over  to  her  enemy. 
Surely  that  is  very  good  because,  though  a  pre- 
arranged matter  of  detail,  it  is  founded  on  human 
nature. 

But  to  get  away  from  these  matters  of  stage- 
craft or  even  dramatic  art,  matters  that  I  must 
ever  handle  gingerly,  to  another  subject  that  now 
and  then  comes  up,  namely  Mr.  Pinero  as  a  man  of 
letters.  Not  long  ago  I  saw  an  article  on  the  edi- 
torial page  of  an  influential  journal,  which  began 
by  saying  that  "  another  literary  "  artist  had  "  un- 
dertaken to  reunite  literature  and  the  stage,  whose 
divorce  has  been  so  open  and  so  dogmatically  de- 
creed by  the  melodramatists."  This  interested  me : 
I  had  heard  talk  of  the  divorce,  although  I  had 


90  PINERO 

not  known  that  it  was  the  melodramatists  who  had 
pronounced  the  decree,  and  I  was  glad  to  hear  of 
the  reconciliation  which  the  article  went  on  to 
speak  of  as  almost  if  not  possibly  quite  successful. 
It  seemed  a  good  deal  for  one  single  work  to  ac- 
complish and  I  became  curious  about  it.  The  lit- 
erary artist  in  question  was  Mrs.  Craigie  or  John 
Oliver  Hobbes  (I'm  sure  I  don't  know  which  to  call 
her — or  him;  it's  very  awkward  about  the  pro- 
nouns,) and  the  means  of  reconciliation  was  "  The 
Ambassador,"  which  subsequently  appeared  in 
print. 

I  thought  it  rather  strange  that  John  Oliver 
Hobbes  should  be  spoken  of  as  a  leader,  as  one  of 
the  very  few  men  of  letters  who  had  had  to  do  with 
the  theatre.  But  I  found  that  the  article  drew 
the  line  pretty  sharply,  for  it  appeared  later  that 
*'  Dumas  and  Pinero  are  almost  the  only  men  who 
take  a  high  grade  of  literary  art  to  the  theatre." 
I  think  this  must  surely  have  been  before  "  Cyrano 
de  Bergerac,"  and  certainly  before  its  author  had 
been  elected  to  the  Academy.  Still,  even  then  it 
seems  to  leave  out  a  good  many. 

But,  after  all,  what  is  a  "  literary  play "  ? 
What  is  meant  by  "  taking  literary  art  to  the 
theatre  "?  I  don't  know  anything  else  to  say,  just 
now,  except  that  a  literary  play  is  one  that  can  be 
printed  in  a  book  and  read  with  satisfaction  by  a 


PINERO  91 

cultivated  person ;  namely,  some  one  like  oneself.  I 
do  not  see  that  much  can  be  said  beyond  that.  The 
fact  that  a  man  is  or  is  not  professionally  con- 
nected with  the  theatre  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 
Moliere  was  an  actor,  Lessing  a  dramatic  critic, 
Sheridan  a  manager ;  yet  they  contributed  to  liter- 
ature much  more,  so  far  as  the  drama  is  concerned, 
than  Voltaire,  Klopstock,  and  Addison,  who  were 
distinctly  men  of  letters. 

It  may  seem  foolish  to  say  that  a  literary  play  is 
one  that  is  printed  in  a  book.  Still  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  there  have  been  plays,  even  "  liter- 
ary plays,"  which  never  made  a  part  of  literature 
simply  because  they  were  never  printed.  People 
saw  them,  liked  them  perhaps,  and  forgot  them: 
and  there  was  an  end  of  it.  But  if  you  print  your 
play  and  can  get  the  right  people  to  read  it,  then 
it  becomes  literature,  in  the  sense,  of  course,  that 
a  great  deal  else  becomes  literature.  Now  a  good 
many  of  Mr.  Pinero's  plays  have  been  printed,  so 
here  we  have  a  topic  that  may  readily  be  dis- 
cussed. 

Mr.  Pinero  has  written  a  great  many  plays  and 
those  of  different  kinds.  "  The  Magistrate  "  is  a 
delightful  farce ;  "  Sweet  Lavender  "  is  an  attract- 
ive idyll.  But  Mr.  Pinero's  claim  to  consideration 
IS  not  founded  on  farces  or  idylls :  he  is  thought  of 
especially  as  having  written  "  'The  Second  Mrs. 


92  PINERO 

Tanqueray "  and  a  number  of  other  so-called 
"  problem-plays.''  Mr.  Brander  Matthews'  se- 
vere reprehension  of  M.  Rostand  could  never  be 
made  of  Mr.  Pinero.  Whatever  be  the  case  about 
a  criticism  of  life,  he  certainly  is  supposed  to 
present  problems;  whether  he  be  really  influenced 
or  not  by  Ibsen  or  Dumas,  he  has  some  character- 
istics that  remind  us  of  them.  What  may  be  said 
of  him  from  this  standpoint? 

I  do  not  care  for  the  term  "  problem-play." 
It  may  be  a  convenient  expression  for  a  play  that 
presents  a  problem,  but  certainly  it  is  inelegant; 
one  would  never  speak  of  an  adventure  play,  a  his- 
tory  play,   a  manners   play.      But  more   funda- 
mentally the  term  is  at  fault  because  problems  as 
such  are  not  especially  good  subjects  for  plays. 
'Plays  deal  with  life,  and  life  does  not  consist  very 
!  largely  of  problems.     The  sociologist  and  the  leg- 
islator deal  with  problems,  but  the  average  man 
or  woman  has  not  much  to  do  with  them  save  as 
'  an  interesting  intellectual  exercise.     We  are  all 
concerned  with  living,  doubtless,  but  living  does 
not  involve  many  problems,  save  of  a  very  practi- 
cal nature,  as  how  to  manage  a  small  income  or 
how  to  bring  up  one's  children  or  how  to  carry  on 
one's  business  or  how  to  settle  one's  religion  or 
politics.    Otherwise  the  main  thing  is  how  to  carry 
out  an  ideal  which  forms  itself  within  us,  not  by 


PINERO  93 

the  resolution  of  problems  generally,  but  in  much 
more  subtle  ways.  And  even  if  problems  were  a 
current  factor  in  life,  a  play  would  be  a  poor  place 
for  the  exploiting  them*  A  novelist  may  perhaps 
deal  with  problems,  for  he  has  space  in  which  to 
argue  them  pro  and  con,  but  arguments  are  not 
very  interesting  to  listen  to. 

Nor  if  problems  were  a  fair  test  of  the  play- 
wright, would  Mr.  Pinero  fare  very  well.  He  does 
not,  so  far  as  I  know,  present  himself  as  a  problem- 
solver,  but  suppose  for  a  moment  that  he  did. 
What  are  his  problems  ?  "  The  Second  Mrs.  Tan- 
queray  "  presents  possibly  the  problem,  "  How  can 
a  woman  with  a  past  become  a  woman  without  a 
past  ?  "  This  problem  clearly  has  the  simple  an- 
swer that  she  cannot  do  it  at  all,  to  which  it  may 
be  added  that  no  one  else  can  either,  by  means 
observable  on  the  stage.  "  The  Profligate  "  seems 
to  raise  the  novel  problem,  "  Is  it  a  good  plan  to 
marry  a  rake  to  reform  him.'^ ''  "  The  Notorious 
Mrs.  Ebbsmith"  has  what  is  really  more  of  a 
■  question,  "  Can  a  man  and  woman  live  together  as 
intellectual  companions  ? "  which,  however,  is  a 
^matter  that  sensible  people  (not  reformers)  will 
;  not  spend  much  time  upon.  So  I  do  not  feel  that 
Mr.  Pinero's  problems  would  make  him  more 
worthy  of  attention  than  various  other  dramatists. 
Even  if  he  had  problems,  however,  they  would 


94  PINERO 

not  make  plays.  A  good  play  generally  gives  us 
some  action  that  in  its  condensed  dramatic  form 
will  move  us  somehow,  be  an  active  factor  in  our 
thinking  and  feeling;  it  gives  us  some  character 
often  typical  of  an  idea,  or  of  something  that  we 
are  thinking  about.  By  virtue  of  being  a  play  it 
may  be  able  to  burn  these  things  in  upon  our  mem- 
ories. ''  Macbeth  "  gives  us  the  wages  of  sin  in 
the  form  of  death  to  the  finer  life  and  finally  of  the 
death  of  the  body.  "  Hamlet  "  gives  us  the  man 
of  thought  in  the  world  of  action.  Here  Mr. 
Pinero  might  have  something  to  give  us.  If  he 
have  anything  to  say,  being  a  master  of  stage  art, 
he  should  be  able  to  create  some  figure  typical  of 
some  great  element  in  life,  some  action  or  situation 
which  gathers  into  a  focus  some  great  experience. 
I  fear  he  does  not  do  so.  His  shady  ladies  soon 
become  very  shadowy  in  the  mind.  The  solutions 
to  his  "  problems  "  are  like  that  of  Alexander  over 
the  Grordian  knot.  "  When  Mr.  Pinero  essayed  to 
write  plays  such  as  these,  dealing  with  the  deepest 
problems  of  life,"  writes  a  recent  critic,  "  he  chal- 
lenged comparison  not  merely  with  the  world  of 
dramatists,  but  with  the  world  of  thinkers."  It 
is  going  rather  far  to  call  Mr.  Pinero's  problems 
the  deepest  of  life  or  to  fancy  that  the  world  of 
thinkers  has  ever  been  very  much  concerned  with 
them.     Mr.  Pinero  does  not  make  much  of  them, 


PINERO  96 

they  do  not  remain  with  us ;  they  hold  our  attention 
while  they  are  acting,  but  we  soon  lose  them  from 
mind.  This  is  really  not  so  much  the  fault  of  the 
thinker  as  of  the  artist.  Sudermann,  to  take  an 
example  not  so  often  trotted  out  as  Ibsen  or 
Dumas,  is  not  a  thinker,  and  yet  "  Die  Ehre," 
"  Sodom's  Ende,"  "  Heimat,''  while  they  do  not 
offer  us  problems  and  their  solutions,  do  offer  us 
presentation  of  some  of  the  great  contrasts  and 
contradictions  of  life. 

Mr.  Pinero's  latest  plays,  "  Iris  "  and  "  Letty," 
will  not  be  called  problem  plays  by  any  one.  "  The 
Gay  Lord  Quex  "  depicts  what  the  marquess  him- 
self calls  "  a  curious  phase  of  modern  life."  So  in 
an  extended  sense  do  "  Iris  "  and  "  Letty.'' 

"  The  Gay  Lord  Quex  "  can  hardly  be  one  of 
those  plays  which  we  enjoy  from  its  truth  to 
nature,  for  few  of  us  have  had  the  privilege  of 
knowing  a  social  world  where  a  man  can  flirt  with 
a  manicurist  at  noon  and  with  a  duchess  at  mid- 
night. Those  who  can  compare  the  play  with  life 
itself  will  regard  it  as  a  picture  of  manners.  But 
more  broadly  the  interest  in  the  play  lies  in  the 
cleverness  of  the  intrigue,  and  in  a  minor  way  in 
the  cnaracter  of  Lord  Quex  himself.  From  the 
rather  doubtful  atmosphere  of  "  establishments  " 
which  serve  a  double  purpose,  and  Italian  gardens 
and  boudoirs   which  seem  to  be  used  for  one  only, 


96  PINERO 

he  emerges  with  more  credit  than  any  one  would 
imagine  on  his  first  appearance.  But  the  real 
thing  is  the  extreme  cleverness  of  the  turns  in  the 
third  act,  wherein  the  manicurist  and  the  reformed 
rake  pit  themselves  against  each  other.  This  is 
dramatic  construction;  something  which  I  admire 
immensely  when  I  see  it  and  consider  it  imperti- 
nent to  praise. 

"  Iris  "  and  "  Letty  "  have  as  much  construc- 
tion and  more  real  body  to  them.  The  phases  of 
life  which  they  present  are  more  general.  If  we 
do  not  know  them,  we  have  known  others  pretty 
nearly  like  them.  And  if  not  even  that,  we  can  see 
some  pretty  general  principles  of  life  upon  which 
they  are  based.  The  first  shows  us  a  bit  of  the 
world  that  is  dependent  on  pleasure.  Iris  and  her 
friends  enjoy  life  while  they  have  money  (whereby 
they  can  make  others  minister  to  their  pleas- 
ures), but  when  they  lose  it,  they  are  all  at  sea. 
It  is  true  that  Maldonado  is  a  millionaire  banker, 
Kane  a  working  solicitor,  and  Trenwith  goes  to 
work  out  his  destiny  in  Canada.  But  there  is  not 
much  doubt  that  Maldonado  did  not  work  for  his 
money,  while  Kane,  of  course,  stole  his,  and  as  for 
Trenwith's  making  a  competence  in  British  Colum- 
bia in  two  years,  we  on  this  side  the  water  are  sim- 
ply incredulous.  Poor  old  Croker  had  got  to 
middle  age  without  being  useful  in  the  world,  and 


PINERO  97 

so,  when  he  lost  the  money  he  had  inherited,  he 
couldn't  think  of  anything  but  being  a  club  sec- 
retary, and  as  for  Iris  herself,  of  course  that  is 
the  whole  play,  the  picture  of  the  weak  nature  so 
dependent  upon  its  luxuries  that  it  must  follow 
the  easiest  path  to  them. 

As  for  "  Letty,"  it  seems  to  me  as  strong  a 
piece  of  work  as  anything  Mr.  Pinero  has  done. 
It  presents  no  problem  but  merely  an  element  in 
life,  namely,  a  glimpse  of  a  world  that  has  run  to 
seed,  particularly  of  an  old  family  which  has  kept 
its  money  but  lost  its  power  of  behaving  decently, 
or  rather,  perhaps,  has  not  moved  on  with  the  rest 
of  society.  With  this  is  contrasted  the  world  in 
which  Letty  lives,  sordid,  coarse,  stupid,  and  yet 
with  the  elements  of  happiness  in  it.  In  a  way 
the  play  challenges  comparison  with  "  Sodom's 
Ende  "  and  "  Ghosts.''  It  need  hardly  be  said 
that  Mr.  Pinero  does  not  burn  in  his  idea  with  the 
atrocious  firmness  of  Ibsen.  And  it  should  be  said 
that  he  is  not  so  convinced  of  the  real  excellence  of 
good,  honest,  innocent  life  as  is  the  German,  and 
consequently  cannot  make  his  picture  of  it  con- 
vincing to  the  audience.  Still  one  follows  Letty 
intently:  at  first  it  all  seems  disagreeable,  true, 
incomprehensible,  but  it  clears  up  as  the  play  goes 
on,  until  finally,  in  the  last  half  of  the  fourth  act, 
the  aim  of  the  dramatist  come*  out  clearly,  and  line 


98  PINERO 

after  line  is  added  with  perfect  definiteness  and 
surety  of  hand.  And  the  Epilogue,  though  possi- 
bly not  absolutely  sincere,  is  really  the  right 
thing. 

Mr.  Pinero  is  not  a  thinker,  a  moralist,  or  a 
philosopher.  Nor  does  he  appear  to  think  that  he 
is.  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  writes  articles  in  the 
magazines  on  the  function  of  the  drama,  and  the 
renascence  of  it,  and  the  aims  and  the  art  and  the 
other  things  of  it,  but  Mr.  Pinero  seems  content  to 
write  plays.  He  does  not  pose  as  other  than  a 
dramatist :  his  admirers  may  talk  of  his  problems, 
but  his  own  work  does  not  give  the  impression  that 
he  takes  himself  or  his  work  over  seriously.  His 
plays  are  not  sermons  nor  polemics,  they  have  no 
arguments  and  no  prefaces.  They  are  simply 
plays,  and  for  the  moment,  at  the  theatre,  they 
are  remarkably  good  ones. 

How  good  they  are  at  the  theatre  every  one 
knows ;  how  good  they  are  even  to  read  is  apparent 
when  we  read  the  works  of  some  other  successful 
playwrights,  say  of  his  predecessor  Robertson. 
Robertson's  comedies  are  in  a  general  way  not  so 
very  unlike  Mr.  Pinero's.  They  do  not  present 
problems,  but  that  is  merely  because  problems  were 
not  in  fashion  in  the  sixties.  Robertson  presents 
questions,  and  between  questions  and  problems,  so 
far  as  the  dramatist  is  concerned,  there  is  not 


PINERO  99 

much  difference.  Neither  can  be  settled  by  a  play ; 
each  gives  a  playwright  a  theme  which  may  affect 
his  audience  keenly.  But  Robertson's  "  School/' 
for  instance, — which  happens  to  be  the  only  one  of 
his  that  I  have  at  hand, — Mr.  Pinero  is  certainly 
miles  beyond  that,  partly  because  everybody  is, 
but  also  in  part  because  he  is  really  more  of  a  man 
of  letters  than  Robertson.  It  is  true  that  Mr, 
Pinero  is  first  and  foremost  a  man  of  the  theatre. 
When  "  The  Ambassador "  appeared  it  was 
curious  to  compare  it  with  "  The  Princess  and  the 
Butterfly,"  which  came  out  about  the  same  time. 
The  two  plays  were  of  much  the  same  general 
kind,  comedies  of  character  and  incident,  set  in 
the  same  world,  mostly  in  the  same  place,  more  or 
less  alike  in  plot  if  not  in  motive.  Mr.  Pinero's 
play  is  certainly  the  more  theatrical  if  you  come  to 
analyse  it  closely :  everybody  has  something  to  do, 
to  be  sure,  but^  often  somebody  has  no  reason  for 
existing,  save  to  do  some  special  thing  that  the 
play  demands.  The  dialogue  of  both  plays  is 
smart  and  showy,  but  Mr.  Pinero's  is  often  con- 
ventional and  artificial,  while  in  "  The  Ambassa- 
dor "  there  are  often  touches  of  nature  that  might 
pass  unperceived  on  the  boards.  There  is  not 
much  to  choose  as  to  the  characters,  but  Mr. 
Pinero's  are  somewhat  more  mechanical  in  that 
they  are  all  people  who  exhibit  the  motive  of  the 


100  PINERO 

play,  show  the  effects  of  middle  age,  in  different 
ways.  One  is  a  woman  who  still  loves  her  husband, 
one  a  woman  who  chiefly  loves  her  dinner,  and  so 
on,  and  they  are  not  much  more.  But  if  Mr. 
Pinero  is  the  more  theatrical,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  he  is  writing  for  the  theatre.  The 
theatre  has  its  conventions,  and  it  would  be  absurd 
to  imagine  that  even  to-day  we  could  transfer  a 
bit  of  real  life  from  the  parlour  to  the  stage,  and 
have  it  seem  across  the  footlights  as  it  seemed 
across  the  room. 

In  the  Fifth  Reader,  or  perhaps  the  Fourth, 
ihere  used  to  be  a  tale  about  two  sculptors  who 
made  two  statues  to  go  up  and  be  set  on  a  very 
high  place.  The  reader  may  remember  it;  one 
statue  seemed  coarse  and  rude  till  it  got  where  it 
was  intended  to  be;  the  other,  which  was  very 
-charming  and  delicate  when  examined  down  below, 
lost  a  good  deal  when  it  was  put  in  place.  It  is  the 
same  thing  here.  Mr.  Pinero  knows  the  stage 
better  than  Mrs.  Craigie:  he  is  somewhat  conven- 
tional and  confined,  but  he  must  know  the  stage. 
Ladies  wear  rouge  on  the  stage  and  put  lines  under 
their  eyes,  and  do  other  things  which  would  not 
render  them  attractive  in  the  parlour,  and  go  do 
the  men.  Some  of  these  things  about  Mr.  Pinero 
that  we  do  not  care  for  are  necessary  for  the  right 
effect  across  the  footlights. 


PINERO  101 

Ancl  as  to  the  other  things; — the  delicacies,  the 
quiet  touches,  the  deUghtful  half-tones, — we  must 
be  content  to  miss  them  at  the  theatre.  Of  course 
we  may  mourn  that  these  things  cannot  be  on  the 
stage,  that  they  can  get  no  farther  than  to  be 
realised  by  the  kindly  imagination,  that  they  seem 
to  lose  character  and  colour  when  incorporate  in 
real  flesh  and  blood.  We  may  mourn  at  all  this, 
but  it  will  be  without  reason.  Our  keenest  pleas- 
ures, our  most  delightful  thrills  or  chuckles,  do 
we  really  wish  to  share  them  with  the  multitude  ? 

The  stage  is  still  a  public  place.  It  is  not  out- 
doors and  boisterous  as  it  was  with  the  Elizabeth- 
ans, but  still  it  is  not  exactly  a  place  for  intima- 
cies. Let  us  be  content  to  have  our  poetry  as  o 
want  it,  to  ourselves  at  home,  and  on  the  stage  to 
have  what  the  stage  can  give  us,  effective  figures 
which  will  live  in  our  minds,  effective  situations 
which  will  sum  up  whole  developments,  effective 
actions  which  will  typify  whole  experiences.  The^e 
things  can  doubtless  be  gained  otherwise;  books 
and  pictures  often  give  them  to  us.  But  nowhere 
do  we  get  them  with  the  same  force  of  impression 
as  on  the  stage,  for  the  stage  has  a  hundred  means 
of  directing,  concentrating,  focussing  what  life 
spreads  out  at  large,  upon  one  spot  of  our  atten* 
tion. 


BERNARD  SHAW 

It  is  hard  to  take  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  seriously, 
for  he  has  such  a  gift  of  wit  and  paradox  that  he 
is  apt  to  seem  desirous  of  appearing  frivolous.  It 
is  hard  also  to  write  about  him,  for  he  has  written 
a  good  deal  about  himself  much  more  cleverly  than 
most  people  have  written  about  him.  He  has  a 
much  better  knowledge  of  the  subject  and  a 
superior  gift  of  expression.  Yet  the  attempt  must 
be  made,  for  he  really  is  serious  in  the  main.  He 
wishes  to  accomplish  something  worth  while  and 
he  will  do  so,  too,  or  do  something  in  the  direction. 
If  one  cannot  get  into  touch  with  him,  then  so 
much  the  worse  for  oneself. 

I  was  about  to  begin  by  saying  that  Mr.  Shaw 
was  not  so  much  a  master  of  stagecraft  as  some 
other  people.  Just  then,  however,  I  saw  in  a  paper 
that  a  distinguished  Shawian  actor  affirmed  him 
to  be  greater  in  dramatic  construction  than 
Shakespeare.  That  made  me  pause.  It  is  true 
that  the  remark  was  made  at  the  University  of 
Chicago,  an  institution  whence  newspaper  report 
is  apt  to  offer  us  matter  much  more  highly  col- 

102 


BERNARD  SHAW  103 

oured  than  the  original:  still  such  may  have  been 
the  opinion  of  the  actor  in  question.  I  do  not, 
however,  believe  that  it  is  Mr.  Shaw's.  Mr.  Shaw 
himself  says  somewhere,  with  his  usual  candour 
and  even  modesty,  that  he  is  not  remarkable  for 
stage  technique.  His  plays,  he  seems  to  think, 
are  technically  like  other  plays.  He  says  that  he 
is  better  than  Shakespeare  in  one  respect,  and  here 
not  a  few  will  probably  agree  with  him,  but  does^ 
not  claim  superiority  in  the  matter  of  stage  con- 
struction. There  is  not  very  much  point  in  the 
comparison.  Shakespeare  made  his  plays  for  his 
own  theatre,  which  was  very  different  from  ours, 
and  much  of  his  absolute  stage  technique  is  to-day 
impossible.  Take  the  fifteen  scenes  (more  or  less) 
in  the  third  act  of  "  Antony  and  Cleopatra,"  and 
in  the  fourth;  that  is  something  out  of  the  ques- 
tion now,  and  so  it  is  with  some  otliv^T  matters.  In 
a  large  way  I  suppose  Shakespeare  had  uior^  dra- 
matic art  than  Mr.  Shaw;  certainly  he  managed 
to  write  more  plays  that  did  and  do  well  on  the 
stage. 

But  stagecraft  is  not  Mr.  Shaw's  particularly 
strong  point,  although,  like  most  literary  men  who 
write  plays,  he  seems  to  be  well  settled  in  the 
opinion  that  he  knows  quite  enough  about  the 
matter  for  practical  purposes.  It  may  be 
doubted,  however,  whether  his  work  is  especially 


104  BERNARD  SHAW 

well  fitted  for  the  stage.  He  can  write,  I  sup- 
pose,  almost  anything,  and  he  has  written  a  dozen 
plays.  Some  of  them  have  appeared  on  the  stage, 
and  that  with  a  greater  or  less  success  for  the 
time.  But  a  determined  criticism  would  probably 
show  that  their  success  was  due  not  so  much  to 
their  dramatic  character  as  to  something  else. 

Mr.  Shaw's  real  matter  of  importance  is  not 
his  dramatic  art,  but  his  ideas  or  his  way  of  think- 
ing. He  is  a  critic  and  a  dramatist,  it  is  true, 
but  at  bottom  he  is  a  Radical,  a  Revolutionist,  a 
Socialist,  I  believe.  His  plays  may  be  successful 
as  plays,  and  he  is  naturally  pleased  or  displeased, 
but  the  real  root  of  the  matter  is  in  the  ideas.  In 
fact,  I  suppose  his  ideas  rather  interfere  with  his 
success  as  a  playwright,  because  they  prevent  his 
taking  the  stage  seriously.  He  says  that  he  did 
not  at  first,  a^.J  results  would  seem  to  show  that 
he  did  not  afterwards.  He  generally  cast  his 
plays  "  in  the  ordinary  practical  comedy  form  in 
use  in  all  the  theatres,"  but  we  may  infer  that 
he  could  with  equal  ease  have  cast  them  in  any 
other  form;  indeed,  his  later  plays  have  been  of 
various  kinds. 

It  seems  not  unnatural  that  when  a  man  has 
mainly  at  heart  the  exploitation  of  some  idea  or 
conception,  and  considers  the  dramatic  part  of 
the  business  of  minor  importance,  he  will  not  be 


BERNARD  SHAW  105 

a  pre-eminent  success  on  the  stage.  The  actor 
considers  the  acting  and  the  stage  management  of 
immense  importance,  and  the  ideas  of  very  little 
or  none  at  all,  and  even  he  does  not  always  suc- 
ceed. 

It  would  certainly  not  be  worth  while  to  at- 
tempt to  present  a  boiling  down  of  Mr.  Shaw's 
ideas.  For  one  thing  his  object  in  writing  is  gen- 
erally to  express  them,  which  he  does  commonly 
much  better  than  I  should  be  able  to.  But,  for 
another  thing,  he  has  so  many  ideas.  He  is,  and 
for  a  long  time  has  been,  a  champion  of  a  dif- 
ferent order  of  society,  and  as  such  has  not  only 
had  many  good  ideas  of  his  own,  but  he  has  ex- 
pressed them  excellently  and  very  amusingly.  Add 
to  that  all  the  ideas  that  he  has  imputed  to  Wag- 
ner, Ibsen,  Nietzsche,  and  you  have  far  too  many 
for  a  short  essay.  Bxt  still  it  will  be  worth 
making  a  try  at  the  general  nature  and  character 
of  his  ideas  as  presented  in  his  plays,  or  at  least 
of  his  dramatic  character. 

Mr.  Shaw  has  published  eleven  plays.  Of  these 
"  Widowers'  Houses  "  deals  with  the  position  of  a 
man  who  lives  on  money  used  by  somebody  else  in 
ways  he  cannot  approve.  This  is  a  pretty  im- 
portant matter  in  modern  life:^  brings  in  what 
may  really  be  a  problem  to  inany.  So  many 
people  nowadays — I  suppose  it  i^as  so  always — 


106  BERNARD  SHAW 

live  on  the  work  of  others,  that  it  is  rather  im- 
portant to  know  how  the  money  is  employed  which 
gets  your  bread  and  butter.  "  Mrs.  Warren's 
Profession "  presents  a  girl  whos^  mother  has 
educated  her  with  money  made  in  a  pecuHarly  dis- 
honourable manner.  This  is  not  so  common  a 
case;  the  particular  manner  brings  up  various 
phases  of  the  question  which  are  so  special  that 
the  general  nature  of  the  problem  is  largely  lost. 
"  The  Philanderers,"  which  is  called  an  "  unpleas- 
ant play,"  has  no  definite  problem,  but  is  more  a 
satire  on  what  used  to  be  called  the  "  new  woman." 
These  ideas  we  need  not  discuss:  they  are  but 
special  forms  taken  by  the  general  motive  power 
of  Mr.  Shaw's  thinking. 

It  is  with  Mr.  Shaw  as  with  most  men :  you  will 
best  get  at  them  when  they  are  not  dead  set  on 
some  special  object.     '''  Arms  and  the  Man  "  has 
no  special  target,  and  for  that  reason,  perhaps, 
it   was   more   successful   on   the   stage   than   Mr. 
Shaw's  earlier  pieces.     Taking  as  a  setting  the 
vague  possibilities  for  romance  offered  by  Servia 
and    Bulgaria,    Mr.    Shaw    calmly    produces    a 
strictly  realistic  play.     He  presents  the  world  as     . 
it  is — not  especially  in  Servia  or  Bulgaria,  for^J[    / 
suppose  he   has   no   especial  knowledge   of  th(5^«  » 
countries — ^but  the  world  in  general,  and.-^eai^s 
a  very  amusing  satire.     It  is  a  satire,  and^it  is 


BERNARD  SHAW  107 

amusing,  but  it  has  enough  hits  at  truth  to  be  a 
little  more  than  that.  Mr.  Shaw  gets  everybody 
off  their  high  horses — the  soldier,  the  gentleman, 
the  romantic  young  lady — we  see  and  acknow- 
ledge the  various  pretences  and  affectations  of  life 
as  we  have  often  done  before.  Mr.  Shaw  wishes  to 
get  at  the  real  facts,  the  real  springs  of  action, 
but  he  does  not  get  much  farther  than  others  have 
done.  That,  I  suppose,  was  the  reason  that 
*'  Arms  and  the  Man  "  was  not  more  successful 
on  the  stage  than  it  was.  Its  object  was  satir? 
but  not  very  vigorous  satire,  nor  on  very  new 
lines.  It  was  more  quaint,  I  should  say^  than 
anything  else.  Still,  beside  its  particular  satire, 
it  has  plenty  of  touches  which  show  the  more  gen- 
eral purpose  of  the  man.  In  the  first  act,  where 
the  Servian  soldier  has  sought  refuge  in  the  room 
of  the  Bulgarian  young  lady,  we  see  constantly 
that  we  are  to  have  the  real  thing,  tinctured  with 
epigram,  it  is  true,  but  still  nearer  the  real  thing 
than  melodrama. 

"  Some  soldiers,'*  says  Raina  scornfully,  "  are 
afraid  of  death." 

"  All  of  them,  dear  lady,"  answers  the  man, 
**  all  of  them,  believe  me.  It  is  our  duty  to  live 
as  long  as  we  can,  and  kill  as  many  of  the  enemy 
as  we  can." 

There  is  satire  and  epigram  there,  but  there  Is 

/T    ^     Or  THE  ^ 

I    UNIVERSITY  I 


108  BERNARD  SHAW 

also  a  certain  sort  of  reality  and  great  reason- 
ableness. There  is  plenty  of  it.  "  Bless  you, 
dear  lady,"  says  the  man,  "  you  can  always  tell 
an  old  soldier  by  the  inside  of  his  holsters  and 
cartridge  boxes.  The  young  ones  carry  pistols, 
the  old  ones  grub."  It  may  or  may  not  be  so,  but 
at  any  rate  it  is  a  resolute  doing  away  of  conven- 
tional romance,  of  the  romance  of  pictures  and 
books  and  so  on,  for  the  reasonable  view  which  is 
willing  to  make  an  effort  after  the  facts.  It  need 
not  be  that  Mr.  Shaw  knows  as  much  of  what  real 
soldiers  actually  are  as  Mr.  Kipling.  That  par- 
ticularity is  rather  beside  his  purpose :  his  especial 
aim  is  to  open  our  eyes  now  and  then  to  the  im- 
possibihty  of  carrying  through  half  the  notions 
that  have  grown  up  in  the  minds  of  every  one  from 
books  and  pictures  and  superficial  talk,  mingled 
with  our  own  childish  imagination  and  self-centred 
desire.  That  sort  of  thing  will  not  stand  the  test 
of  experience;  people  are  always  coming  to  grief 
by  depending  upon  it;  better  open  one's  eyes  and 
interpret  what  one  really  sees  by  a  little  common 
sense. 

When  you  have  your  mind  set  on  this  sort  of 
thing  it  must  be  hard  to  think  of  doing  anything 
else.  I  think  it  is  remarkable  that  Mr.  Shaw 
should  have  any  dramatic  construction  at  all.  I 
remember  nothing  of  it  in  "  Arms  and  the  Man,'* 


BERNARD  SHAW  109 

which  IS,  all  the  same,  one  of  the  cleverest  and  most 
amusing  plays  that  one  reads.  I  am  sorry  to  say 
that  I  never  saw  it,  but  I  suspect  that  it  does  not 
make  quite  so  much  difference  as  with  some  other 
plays. 

"You  Never  Can  Tell"  is  another  delightful 
play.  It  is  on  the  face  of  it  more  frivolous  and, 
indeed,  more  impossible,  if  one  may  say  so,  than 
"Arms  and  the  Man,"  but  it  is  full  of  the  same 
sort  of  eye-openers  as  the  other,  and  in  the  pas- 
sages between  Valentine  and  Gloria  it  begins  to 
get  quite  close  to  some  of  Mr.  Shaw's  later 
heresies.  That  delightful  waiter,  too, — I'm  sure 
he  would  have  made  an  Admirable  Crichton  if  he 
had  had  half  a  chance.  Let  us  get  on,  however, 
to  "  Candida,"  for  that  is,  I  take  it,  the  best  of 
Mr.  Shaw's  plays,  and  certainly  it  is  the  one  that 
most  people  will  happen  to  have  in  mind  now, 
unless  perhaps  "  Man  and  Superman  "  be  eviscer- 
ated and  exposed  on  the  stage  some  time  in  the 
winter. 

"  Candida  "  carries  the  process  of  eye-opening, 
so  dear  to  Mr.  Shaw,  one  step  farther  than  "  Arms 
and  the  Man."  First  we  have  the  Rev.  James 
Morell,  a  Christian  Socialist,  and  therefore  at  war 
with  the  many  evils  and  falsenesses  of  our  social 
life,  and  intent  in  bringing  in  a  good,  strong,  and 
honest  way  of  life  among  people  who  are  too  mucK 


110  BERNARD  SHAW 

bent  on  making  money  and  enjoying  themselves 
to  consider  carefully  the  ways  In  which  they  do  so. 
Certainly  the  character  Is  Inimitably  good,  and 
when  we  think  chiefly  of  that  kind  of  pleasure  that 
comes  from  seeing  people  and  things  presented  In 
a  perfectly  natural  way  and  with  a  perfectly  sure 
touch,  aside  from  what  they  happen  to  be,  when 
we  answer  with  a  thrill  to  every  certainty  of  por- 
trayal, and  chuckle  to  ourselves  at  every  small 
point  of  human  frailty  painted  for  us  just  as  It 
is,  why,  the  Reverend  James  appeals  to  us  as  few 
figures  upon  the  modern  stage.  We  have  him  at 
,;his  best  In  the  contrast  with  Mr.  Burgess,  the 
**  man  of  sixty,  made  coarse  by  the  compulsory 
selfishness  of  petty  commerce " — there  we  have 
him  at  his  best,  and  he  makes  the  right  Impression, 
a  go-ahead,  clear-vlsloned,  plain-speaking  man, 
understanding  the  world  and  taking  It  for  what  It 
is.  *'  Well,"  he  says  to  his  old  scalawag  of  a 
father-in-law,  "  that  did  not  prevent  our  getting 
on  very  well  together.  God  made  you  what  I  call 
a  scoundrel  as  he  made  me  what  you  call  a  fool. 
...  It  was  not  for  me  to  quarrel  with  Jils  handi- 
work in  the  one  case  more  than  in  the  other.  So 
long  as  you  come  here  honestly  as  a  self-respect- 
ing, thorough,  convinced  scoundrel,  justifying 
your  scoundrelism,  and  proud  of  it,  you  are  wel- 
come.    But  I  won't  have  you  here  snivelling  about 


BERNARD  SHAW  111 

being  a  model  employer  and  a  converted  man  when 
you're  only  an  apostate  with  your  coat  turned  for 
the  sake  of  a  County  Council  contract.  No ;  I  like 
a  man  to  be  true  to  himself,  even  in  wickedness. 
Come,  now;  either  take  your  hat  and  go,  or  else 
sit  down  and  give  me  a  good  scoundrelly  reason 
for  wanting  to  be  friends  with  me."  We  certainly 
have  here  one  who  sees  through  the  shams  of  mod- 
ern life,  and  by  the  very  clearness  of  his  vision, 
somehow,  has  power  to  make  all  others  feel  all  their 
sham  pretentiousness.  And  as  he  transfixes  the 
ridiculous  commercialist  who  is  trying  to  make 
friends  with  the  Mammon  of  righteousness,  we  feel 
that  he  and  we  are  of  those  in  the  front  rank  of 
progress,  the  men  who  know  what  is  right  and  so 
can  do  it. 

And  then  appears  Candida  and  her  poet.  He 
is,  to  start  with,  singularly  and  strangely  frank, 
and  strange  and  singular  in  other  ways.  As  he 
and  Candida  drove  from  the  station  he  was  tor- 
mented all  the  time  with  wondering  what  he  ought 
to  give  the  cabman.  He  is  not  made  to  get  along 
well  in  an  everyday  world — that  is,  not  as  the 
world  considers  getting  on  well. 

But  it  soon  appears  that  the  poet  is  there  to 
show  us  a  range  of  view  above  the  Reverend  James. 
A  poet  is  a  man  more  sensitive  than  the  rest  of 
the  world,  and  who  therefore  sees  more  than  most 


112  BERNARD  SHAW 

men,  and  who  has  more  power  of  expression  and 
therefore  says  what  he  sees  more  exactly.  James 
could  of  course  say  good  things.  "  The  over- 
paying instinct  is  a  generous  one ;  better  than  the 
underpaying,  and  not  so  common."  "  No,  no," 
says  Eugene,  "  Cowardice,  incompetence,"  which 
it  often  is,  at  least  in  the  case  of  feeing,  which 
was  the  thing  they  were  talking  about.  The  poet 
opens  up  on  Morell  at  once,  and  comes  out  of  each 
encounter  on  top. 

"  Eugene,  my  boy,"  says  the  cheerful  optimist, 
who  has  just  learned  from  Eugene  that  he  loves 
his  wife,  "  you  are  making  a  fool  of  yourself — a 
very  great  fool  of  yourself.  There's  a  piece  of 
wholesome,  plain  speaking  for  you." 

To  which  Eugene  answers,  "  Oh,  do  you  think 
I  don't  know  all  that?  Do  you  think  that  the 
things  that  people  make  fools  of  themselves  for 
are  any  less  real  and  true  than  the  things  they 
behave  sensibly  about  .^  They  are  more  true,  they 
are  the  only  things  that  are  true." 

We  cannot,  perhaps,  immediately  understand 
such  a  point  of  view.  I  will  confess  that  when 
"  Morell  grasps  him  powerfully  by  the  lapel  of 
his  coat,  he  cowers  down  on  the  sofa  and  screams 
powerfully,"  I  rather  sympathised  with  the  bigger 
man.  And  when  Morell  called  him  a  little  snivel- 
ling, cowardly  whelp,  and  told  him  to  go  before  he 


BERNARD  SHAW  113 

frightened  himself  Into  a  fit,  I  had  enough  red 
blood  in  me  to  agree  with  him.  But  really,  of 
course,  it  is  not  anything  especially  to  admire  in 
a  man  that  he  is  physically  so  much  more  power- 
ful than  another  that  he  could  knock  him  into  a 
cocked-up  hat.  We  feel  that  among  our  own  kind 
of  people  (whatever  kind  it  may  be)  it  is  nice  to 
be  big  and  hearty  and  strong,  and  to  feel  that  we 
could  knock  the  stuffing  out  of  this  or  that  little 
fool  of  our  acquaintance.  But  we  never  make  the 
comparison  broader  and  think  that  a  good,  power- 
ful steam-fitter,  or  a  solid  coal-handler,  is  any 
better  than  we  because  he  could  do  us  up.  So 
clearly  the  Reverend  James  is  not  a  finer  fellow, 
with  all  the  breadth  of  chest ;  indeed,  he  would  be 
the  first  to  discredit  the  reign  of  brute  force,  in 
spite  of  the  charms  of  muscular  Christianity. 

In  fact  Marchbanks  gives  us  a  second  eye-open- 
ing, and  we  perceive  that  the  first  was,  in  a  meas- 
ure, deceptive.  Mr.  Shaw  was  playing  with  us. 
The  first  was  too  easy.  It  is  not  so  much  to  see 
through  the  deceits  and  shams  of  society  nowadays. 
Thackeray  and  Carlyle  are  not  read  by  every- 
body, but  their  chief  standpoints  are  pretty  com- 
mon property.  Indeed  it  is  so  much  the  fashion 
to  look  beneath  the  surface  that  it  is  not  at  all 
hard  to  take  the  pose.  But  really  to  know  what 
is  what,  really  to  react  to  the  facts  of  life,  to  be 


114  BERNARD  SHAW 

really  genuine,  that  is  no  easier  than  It  was  In 
the  days  of  Teufelsdroeckh,  or  of  Gulliver,  or  of 
Piers  the  Ploughman. 

Not  that  the  Reverend  James  Is  absolutely  a 
pretentious  gasbag  any  more  than  Marchbanks  Is 
an  Inspired  prophet.  He  has  a  definite,  a  positive 
part  In  the  world's  work.  You  cannot  reform  the 
world  with  a  few  epigrams;  most  reformers  are 
impracticable  persons,  which  means  that  they  can- 
not determine  details,  do  not  like  to  take  the 
trouble  to  make  their  ideas  fit  complicated  cases, 
are  puzzled  at  any  specific  correct  thinking,  have 
not  patience  and  skill  absolutely  to  know  anything, 
except  a  few  general  principles,  "  great  laws  of 
life,"  as  their  admirers  subsequently  call  them. 
They  are  not  the  people  to  do  the  work  of  reform- 
ing the  world;  the  world  has  to  reform  itself. 
But  It  can  only  be  got  to  reform  Itself  by  mid- 
dlemen, so  that  the  reformers  have  to  have  fol- 
lowers, commonly  men  who  do  not  entirely  under- 
stand them,  but  who  get  full  of  better  ideas  than 
they  had  before,  at  least,  and  who  Incite  the  world 
to  work  Itself  over  into  something  a  little  better 
than  It  was  before.  The  new  Ideas  are  handed 
around  In  predigested  tablets,  and  get  to  be  rather 
the  thing.  Then  the  original  thinkers  retire  or 
are  retired  to  the  background,  and  the  reign  of 
talkers   begins.      The    Rev.    James    Morell   Is    a 


BERNARD  SHAW  11& 

typical  talker.  The  original  thinker  is  a  dreamer 
and  doesn't  like  to  do  anything.  The  talkers  are 
commonly  men  of  vitality  who  have  neither  the 
imagination  to  dream  nor  the  patience  to  think  for 
themselves.  They  want  to  do  something  in  this 
world,  but,  having  no  notion  of  just  what  they 
can  do,  they  take  it  out  in  talking.  They  believe 
absolutely  in  what  they  say,  while  they  say  it,  and 
they  rouse  people  to  a  state  of  excited  conviction 
by  the  hypnotic  power  of  their  language,  as  Mr. 
Morell  did  at  the  meeting  of  the  Guild  of  St. 
Matthew.  It  is  these  latter  people,  those  that 
listen  to  the  talkers,  who  go  ahead  and  do  the 
world's  work  in  reforming  itself;  but  as  they  are 
creatures  of  the  emotions  rather  than  of  the  in- 
tellect, they  never  follow  people  like  Marchbanks 
because  they  do  not  understand  them  nor  like 
them,  but  do  follow  people  like  Mr.  Morell  because 
they  do  like  them  and  do  not  have  to  understand 
them. 

Of  course  Mr.  Shaw  is  one  of  the  Marchbankses, 
but  he  is  not  entirely  without  sympathy  for  the 
Morells.  Who  can  be  entirely  without  sympathy 
for  them? — ^big,  strong,  hearty  fellows.  How 
much  better  it  is  that  they  should  earn  a  living 
by  talking  than  that  they  should  have  to  hoe  com 
all  day  on  a  farm  or  dig  dirt  on  a  railway.  They 
do  more  good,  too. 


116  BERNARD  SHAW 

In  "  Candida  "  Mr.  Shaw  sometimes  loses  the 
reformer  In  the  dramatist.  Yet  he  does  not  do  so 
wholly ;  he  certainly  shows  a  sympathy  toward  the 
end  for  the  Reverend  James  which  is  not  entirely 
consistent.  Recollect  that  scathing  description  of 
his  family  home.  "  You  should  come  with  us, 
Eugene,  and  see  the  pictures  of  the  hero  of  that 
household.  James  as  a  baby !  the  most  wonderful 
of  all  babies.  James  holding  his  first  school  prize, 
won  at  the  ripe  age  of  eight!  James  as  the  cap- 
tain of  his  eleven !  James  in  his  first  frock  coat ! 
James  under  all  sorts  of  glorious  circumstances !  " 
That  is  about  as  bitter  in  its  satire  as  we  can  wish : 
Mr.  Shaw  puts  it  in  the  mouth  of  the  man's  wife. 
That  was  the  right  thing  to  do,  and  yet  he  also 
allows  us  to  feel  a  little  sympathy  for  him. 

"  Candida "  is  undoubtedly  an  excellent  piece 
of  writing,  full  of  those  flashes  of  reality  that  are 
the  great  thing  with  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw.  People 
sometimes  discuss  It  as  a  play  with  all  seriousness ; 
ask  about  its  problem,  about  the  character  of  Can- 
dida, about  the  poet's  secret,  and  such  things. 
They  are  all  beside  the  point.  One  may  talk  of 
them  if  one  will,  just  as  one  may  (Indeed  must) 
admire  Miss  Proserpine  Garland.  But  the  real 
thing  in  the  play  is  that  it  gives  a  standpoint 
from  which  to  view  the  world. 

Appreciating   this,    we   may    proceed   to   Mr. 


BERNARD  SHAW  117 

Shaw's  latest  utterance,  "  Man  and  Superman,'' 
which  I  saw  in  the  paper  the  other  day  is  to  be 
produced  in  New  York  shortly  with  notable  omis- 
sions. This,  perhaps,  makes  it  unnecessary  to 
write  about  it  at  present.  The  play  has  been 
written,  and  Mr.  Shaw  has  also  written  a  criticism 
upon  it,  so  that  no  one  else  need  try  his  hand  upon 
it.  There  still  remained  the  possibiUty  of  saying 
and  showing  either  that  it  would  do  on  the  stage 
or  that  it  would  not.  I  was  going  to  say  the 
latter.  But  there  is  no  use  saying  it  now  if  the 
play  is  to  be  acted  before  this  gets  into  print. 

"  Man  and  Superman  "  is  far  more  a  play  of 
idea  than  most  of  Mr.  Shaw's.     "  Arms  and  the 
Man  "  gave  us  an  idea  of  the  standpoint  of  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw ;  he  was  a  realistic  satirist.    "  Can- 
dida "  went  a  step  farther ;  it  made  it  clear  that 
here  was  a  realist  and  a  satirist  who  was  not  a 
mere  promulgator  of  everyday  realism  (like  Bal-  .   . 
zac,  say)  nor  of  everyday  satire  (say  Thackeray).  \  \ 
Mr.  Shaw,  it  appeared,  was  an  entirely  modern  \ 
person,  an  out-and-out   advocate  of  neo-realism.    i 
Neo-realism  is  merely  the  presentation  of  the  ulti- 
mate facts  of  Uf e  in  any  way  you  like.     In  "  Man 
and  Superman  "  Mr.  Shaw,  having  pierced  to  the 
secret  of  the  ultimate  development  of  Man  from 
protoplaspi  to  the  Superman,  presents  it  to  us  in 
a  piece  of  extravagance,  ostensibly  in  the  garb  of 


118  BERNARD  SHAW 

to-day,  with  automobiles  and  so  on,  but  really  of 
an  entirely  fanciful  nature.  This  mode  of  pres- 
entation is  worth  remarking:  it  is  almost  a  note 
of  Mr.  Shaw's  dramaturgy.  The  expedient  is 
that  of  a  frankly  impossible  motive  carried  out  in 
a  very  realistic  manner.  "  The  Philanderers  "* 
and  "  You  Never  Can  Tell "  were  entirely  absurd 
and  impossible  in  conception,  but  entirely  realistic 
in  execution.  The  other  plays  do  not  have  quite 
so  much  of  it,  but  there  is  usually  some :  in  "  Can- 
dida "  the  calm  discussion  of  which  man  the  lady 
is  to  go  with  seems  almost  as  though  Mr.  Shaw 
thought  it  a  natural  proceeding,  but  of  course  it 
is  not  more  so  than  having  Cleopatra  carried  inta 
Caesar's  presence  in  a  roll  of  carpet  (I  hope  that 
IS  not  historical)  or  having  General  Burgoyne 
march  from  Boston  to  Albany  to  meet  General 
Howe.  "Man  and  Superman"  is  quite  as  fan- 
tastic as  any  romantic  play:  the  main  difference 
is  that  it  is  not  so  interesting ;  the  dashing  across 
Europe  in  an  automobile  pursued  by  the  girl  one 
is  destined  to  marry,  and  landing  among  a  set  of 
Spanish  brigands,  the  chief  of  whom  has  been  a 
waiter  at  the  Savoy,  serves  as  a  vehicle  for  Mr. 
Shaw's  views  as  well  as  anything  else,  but  in  itself 
it  has  no  imaginative  character,  and,  indeed,  is 
rather  a  dull  sort  of  humour. 

But  the  form  is  not  a  matter  of  great  impor- 


BERNARD  SHAW  119 

tance,  though  I  wish  it  were  really  amusing  as 
Mr.  Shaw  could  have  made  it.  The  constant  play 
of  idea  is  the  main  thing  or  else  the  great  idea 
at  bottom.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the 
true  nature  of  the  great  truth  promulgated  in  the 
play  is  not  easily  grasped  even  in  reading,  would 
be  less  easily  understood  if  the  whole  play  were 
given  on  the  stage,  and  will  not  be  even  guessed 
at  if  the  third  act  is  much  cut.  It  is  to  the  effect 
that  the  process  of  development  of  man  into  a 
higher  form  (the  Superman)  is  to  be  carried  on 
by  sexual  selection  just  as  his  development  from 
lower  forms  has  been,  and  that  in  this  process 
women  (do  or  should)  wish  to  get  married  in  order 
that  they  may  have  children,  and  not  for  anyi 
minor  motive  that  fancy  or  romance  or  conven-| 
tionality  or  policy  may  try  to  push  into  promi- 
nence, and  that  men,  having  been  of  use  in  this 
process,  have  about  as  much  place  in  the  economy 
of  nature  as  a  sucked  orange  at  breakfast.  That 
seems  a  curious  idea  for  a  play.  Mr.  Shaw  pre- 
sents it  to  us  by  the  spectacle  of  two  young  ladies, 
one  of  whom  marries  secretly  and  persuades  the 
father  of  her  husband  not  to  disinherit  him,  and 
the  other  marries  openly,  having  persuaded  her 
own  father  before  dying  to  place  her  in  charge  of 
the  person  she  had  singled  out  for  that  purpose. 
A  slight  action  is  given  to  the  piece  by  the  dash  of 


120  BERNARD  SHAW 

the  not-yet  husband  across  Europe  in  an  auto- 
mobile in  flight  from  the  girl  who  intends  to  marry 
him.  All  the  other  characters  come  after  him  in 
another  automobile,  and  all  fall  among  comic 
brigands. 

All  this  circumstance  appears  to  me  to  be 
pretty  poor  stuff,  and  I  shall  take  leave  of  it 
merely  by  saying  that,  were  it  a  hundred  times 
poorer,  the  play  would  still  be  worth  reading  for 
the  constant  cleverness  of  the  dialogue  and  the 
occasional  seriousness  of  the  matter  conveyed. 
The  theory  of  the  play  I  suppose  to  be  entirely 
false,  but  I  have  no  concern  with  it,  one  way  or 
the  other.  It  gives  Mr.  Shaw  a  chance  for  his 
epigram,  and  his  epigram  gives  us  a  chance  at 
getting  at  a  bit  of  truth  now  and  then,  or  of 
thinking  that  we  do,  both  of  which  are  exhilarat- 
ing sensations.  We  need  not  swallow  them  all  any 
more  than  we  swallow  the  ocean  when  we  go  in 
swimming, — in  fact,  we  could  not  do  so  if  we  tried, 
— but  in  the  constant  effort  to  keep  intellectually 
afloat  and  to  swim  about,  we  find  ourselves  ma- 
terially  invigorated  and  refreshed. 

This  realistic  brilliancy  is  the  great  thing  about 
Mr.  Shaw.  For  the  moment,  I  think,  everything 
else  becomes  dull  and  tawny  beside  this  white  light. 
Pinero  seems  to  be  the  merest  boy,  ^smoking  cig- 
arettes and  talking  of  things  thai  he  knows  as 


BERNARD  SHAW  121 

much  about  as  the  rabbit  does  of  the  purposes  of 
nature.  Sudermann  is  evidently  one  who  makes 
not  even  an  effort  to  see  beneath  the  crust  of  cus- 
tom and  convention  of  a  thousand  years.  Haupt- 
mann,  with  all  his  brilliancy,  is  merely  the  bright 
child  who  amuses  you  by  telling  how  he  gets  the 
better  (or  else  doesn't)  of  oppressive  elders,  a 
jam-pot  rebel  against  meat  and  potatoes.  Ros- 
tand is  the  painter  of  very  exquisite  and  charming 
pictures  to  illustrate  Jack-and-the-Beanstalk  and 
other  such  classics.  This  man,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  had  life  undet"  his  microscope  and  knows  its 
secrets,  has  put  himself  in  touch  with  real  scien- 
tists who  know  the  constitution  of  the  universe, 
and  who  now  presents  to  us,  with  the  sugar  coat- 
ing that  we  demand,  a  few  of  the  ultimate  facts  of 
life,  that  we  may  like  or  dislike,  understand  or 
not,  but  which  are  facts. 

Such  is  something  hke  the  first  impression  that 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  may  fairly  make  on  one  who 
reads  or  sees  his  plays.  Not  that  one  will  neces- 
sarily admire  him  or  care  about  his  ideas,  but  it 
seems  very  hard  to  deny  them  entirely  or  to  get 
round  them  and  him.  You  are  on  his  side 
throughout  the  play,  even  if,  when  it  is  over,  you 
are  astonished  to  find  what  company  you  have  been 
keeping. 

First  impressions  and  second  thoughts  are  often 


122  BERNARD  SHAW 

different.  They  are  with  Mr.  Shaw.  First  im- 
pressions will  be  more  or  less  of  the  kind  that  I 
have  described:  second  thoughts  are  sure  to  be 
anything  except  that.  The  particular  change 
that  comes  over  one  in  regard  to  Mr.  Shaw  is  that 
his  white  light  loses  brilliancy,  and  perhaps  goes 
out.  That  is  to  say,  shortly  after  you  have  been 
decidedly  under  the  influence  of  his  brilliancy,  his 
cleverness,  his  realities,  you  find  yourself  not  quite 
sure  just  what  those  ideas  were  that  so  short  a 
time  ago  seemed,  if  not  indubitable,  yet  at  least 
absolutely  there.  For  this  there  is  a  twofold 
'     reason. 

The  first  is  that,  though  he  writes  plays,  Mr. 
/  Shaw    does    not    present    his    ideas    dramatically. 
/    They  are  as  they  happen  to  be  stated  in  the  dia- 
I      logue,  they  are  what  they  are,  that  is  all, — and 
enough,  too,  some  may  think.     But  for  a  drama- 
.  tist  it  is  not  enough.     The  drama  has  particular 
/     ways  of  giving  impressions.     They  are  very  ef- 
fective ways,  and  they  result  often  in  powerful 
and  long-continued  impressions.      If,  however,  a 
man  writes  plays  and  does  not  avail  himself  of  the 
possibilities  of  the  drama,  then  he  gets   all  the 
drawbacks   of  the  drama   without   its    attendant 
advantages.     And  as  a  means  of  presenting  ideas 
the  drama  has  one  serious  drawback,  namely,  lack 
of  space.     The  dramatist  has  the  means  of  com- 


BERNARD  SHAW  123 

pensating  for  this  disadvantage,  he  can  even  turn 
it  to  his  own  purpose.  He  will  make  up  for  his 
lack  of  opportunity  in  statement  somehow;  if  he 
is  going  to  do  anything,  he  will  have  action,  sit- 
uation, characters  to  carry  the  thing,  to  make  it 
stay  in  our  mind,  to  serve  us  as  tokens  of  the  ideas. 
If  we  do  not  have  this,  if  we  merely  have  the  people 
on  the  stage  telling  each  other  one  thing  or  an- 
other, even  if  it  be  in  epigrammatic  dialogue,  we 
shall  not  get  any  more  out  of  it  than  we  usually 
do  in  hearing  people  tell  of  things.  We  cannot 
expect  to  remember  all  that  we  are  told;  we  may 
remember  or  we  may  not,  according  as  the  ideas 
strike  us  at  the  time.  Now  "  Widowers'  Houses  " 
and  "  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession,"  which  are  the 
two  of  Mr.  Shaw's  plays  that  have  the  least  in- 
teresting ideas,  are  the  two  of  which  the  idea  re- 
mains most  readily  in  the  mind,  because  in  each 
^  casgy  what  idea  there  is,  is  expressed  in  a  dramatic 
way]  it  is  embodied  in  a  Bgure,  VivielTTeturning 
to  her  work  at  Frazer  and  Warren's,  Trench 
shaking  hands  with  Mr.  Sartorius;  these  people 
remain  in  our  minds  in  a  manner  sufficiently  sug- 
gestive of  the  idea  that  is  necessitated  by  the  ex- 
istence of  each.  But  the  other  plays  do  not  leave 
much  of  an  idea;  admirable  characters  some  of 
them  have,  and  to  be  remembered  for  themselves 
(the  waiter,  the  Reverend  James,  'Enery  Straker), 


124  BERNARD  SHAW 

but  not  for  any  ideas  Implicit  in  them.  So  the 
ideas  have  to  trust  to  whatever  statement  of  them 
there  may  happen  to  be,  and  in  a  drama  such 
statement  is  always  insufficient;  sometimes  in  a 
good  play  we  have  explanations  of  theory,  like 
Graf  Trast's  disquisition  on  honour  in  "  Die 
Ehre,"  but  generally  the  dialogue  of  a  play  is  not 
well  fitted  for  that  purpose.  We  do  not,  then, 
remember  Mr.  Shaw's  ideas  very  well,  and  thus  in 
a  short  time  he  becomes,  as  far  as  any  efiFect  is 
concerned,  much  like  anybody  else. 

The  second  reason  that  his  ideas  do  not  affect 
us  much  is  hardly  worth  mentioning  after  the  first. 
It  is  that  his  ideas,  as  a  rule,  are  not  such  as  can 
in  any  way  be  promulgated  on  the  stage.  Some 
ideas  can:  the  constant  effort  of  the  idealist,  the 
constant  strife  of  the  individual, — these  ideas  (it 
is  fair  to  call  them  so)  can  be  dramatically  pre- 
sented. They  may  not  be  worth  so  much  in  the 
practical  affairs  of  life  as  a  correct  understand- 
ing of  the  way  that  man  is  going  to  get  married 
in  his  development  into  future  ages,  or  the  way 
man  should  manage  whatever  marriage  he  happens 
to  be  concerned  in  now,  but  they  seem  to  be  more 
susceptible  of  dramatic  presentation.  Take  a 
thesis  Hke  that  of  "  Man  and  Superman  "  or  of 
"  Candida,"  if  you  can  get  at  it.  It  will  be  found 
to  be  a  so^sJ^generalisation,  which,  even  to  be 


BERNARD  SHAW  125 

considered,  must  be  presented  either  on  the  basis 
of  reason  or  of  authority.  A  play  Is  the  place 
for  neither.  The  Germans  are  apt  to  think  that 
Shakespeare  wrote  his  plays  to  present  great  and 
often  complicated  social  Ideas,  but  If  he  did  he 
was  wasting  his  time,  for  that  Is  not  the  kind  of 
idea  the  drama  can  present  effectively.  It  can 
present  the  conception  of  the  disharmony  of  the 
man  of  thought  In  a  world  of  action  as  In  "  Ham- 
let," the  place  of  young  love  In  an  old  civilisation 
that  Is  tired  of  it,  as  In  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  but 
those  are  much  simpler  notions. 

But  of  course  It  is  of  no  earthly  consequence 
whether  Mr.  Shaw  Is  a  dramatist  or  not.  He  can 
write  most  amusing  plays,  and,  now  that  the 
whirhgig  of  time  has  spun  a  bit,  we  can  see  them 
on  the  stage.  And  If  we  do  not  always  get  his 
Ideas, — or  at  least  do  not  remember  them  when 
we  do  get  them, — yet  still  something  remains.  We 
have  had  a  constant  challenge  and  stimulus,  a  fre- 
quent opening  of  the  window.  We  shall  con- 
stantly turn  to  his  work  with  the  desire  for  reality 
and  the  curiosity  to  know  the  essential  under  the 
superficial,  and  the  assurance  that  by  holding  on 
and  constantly  purifying  our  vision,  we  may  see 
well  enough  to  get  a  step  or  two  nearer  the  truth. 


STEPHEN    PHILLIPS 

*^  Suddenly,  out  of  a  clear  sky,  the  poetic 
drama  Is  upon  us." 

Some  time  ago  a  gifted  and  brilliant  critic 
began  an  article  with  these  extraordinary  words. 
They  served  him  chiefly  as  introduction  to  an  ac- 
count of  a  particular  poetic  drama  which  had  been 
produced  with  "  large  and  wholesome  and  prudent 
success  "  at  Pittsburg.  But  they  were  inspired 
by  Mr.  Beerbohm  Tree's  acceptance  of  the  play 
of  "  Herod,"  by  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips. 

I  quote  them  now,  because  they  made  such  a 
Singular  impression  upon  me  that  I  think  they 
may  appeal  to  others.  They  seem  to  me  to  repre- 
sent a  very  curious  critical  frame  of  mind,  I  think 
it  should  be  called ;  a  sort  of  disposition,  as  it  were, 
a  feeling  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  "  the  poetic 
'drama,"  that  its  appearance  has  been  earnestly 
looked  and  longed  for,  that  by  one  act  of  good- 
natured  magic  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Beerbohm  Tree, 
a  great  consummation  is  about  to  come  to  pass, 
and  that  an  epoch-making  moment  is  at  hand, — 
or  rather  was. 

126 


STEPHEN  PHILLIPS  127 

I  may  be  singular  in  not  having  ever  held  such  a 
Tiew,  but  I  confess  that,  though  I  should  be  glad 
to  see  more  good  plays  at  the  theatre,  I  do  not 
care  a  pin  to  have  them  poetic  dramas. 

In  fact,  when  Mr.  Phillips  seeks  to  restore 
poetry  to  the  English  stage,  he  strives  against  I'' 
wind  and  tide.  Every  great  poet  of  the  19th  cen- 
tury tried  the  same  thing  and  failed.  Coleridge 
finally  succeeded  in  getting  Sheridan  to  produce 
"  Remorse  "  at  Drury  Lane ;  it  was  successful  and 
is  now  not  even  read.  Shelley  chose  the  drama 
mainly  as  a  means  for  lyric  poetry,  and  should 
not  be  counted.  Keats,  Mr.  Phillips's  forerunner, 
— ^but  it  would  be  pressing  the  matter  to  say  that 
he  did  anything  of  the  sort,  though  he  did  write  a 
play.  So  did  Wordsworth,  though  it  was  never 
presented.  Scott's  "  Doom  of  Devorgoil "  was 
by  no  means  as  successful  as  the  commonplace 
dramatisations  that  followed  upon  the  Waverley 
novels  as  they  appeared.  Browning  wrote  several 
plays  for  the  theatre,  and  though  they  were  not 
failures,  they  have  not  kept  the  stage.  The  same 
must  be  said  of  Tennyson.  As  for  Swinburne,  it 
is  not  probable  that  he  meant  his  plays  for  the 
stage  any  more  than  did  Byron,  who,  however, 
appears  occasionally  in  a  spectacular  "  Sarda- 
napalus  "  or  a  literary  "  Manfred." 

In  fact,  if  we  compare  the  19th  century  with 


128  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

the  age  of  Elizabeth  we  have  a  curious  contrsist. 
About  1600  we  have  a  large  group  of  dramatists 
who  as  poets  were  at  least  of  the  second  order 
("all  but  one "),  producing  plays  that  appear 
to  have  pleased  and  delighted  the  play-going  pub- 
lic, while  three  centuries  later  we  have  a  series  of 
poets  of  greater  poetic  power  than  the  Eliza- 
bethans, who  are  certainly  unable  to  hold  the 
stage,  or,  as  a  rule,  even  to  obtain  a  footing  there. 
Further  we  may  remark  that  even  as  literature, 
as  poetry,  the  drama  of  the  19th  century  is  not 
comparable  to  that  of  the  16th. 

Such  is  the  verdict  of  history  which  Mr.  Phil- 
lips or  any  one  else  who  attempts  *'  the  poetic 
drama  "  moves  to  set  aside.  If  we  ask  as  to  the 
grounds,  we  have  the  rather  vague  idea  that  there 
ought  to  be  poetry  on  our  stage,  that  the  drama 
is  the  highest  form  of  poetry,  that  It  is  a  shame 
that  we  cannot  have  poetry  at  the  theatre  as  well 
as  the  French  or  the  Germans. 

Turning  the  matter  over  in  our  minds,  we  may 
ask  why  any  other  poet  should  think  of  succeed- 
ing in  the  direction  where  the  most  successful 
poetry  of  Shakespeare  is  a  failure.  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  says  that  Shakespeare  "  still  holds  the  stage 
so  well  that  it  is  not  impossible  to  meet  old  play- 
goers who  have  witnessed  public  performances  of 
more  than  thirty  out  of  his  thirty-seven  reputed 


STEPHEN  PHILLIPS  129 

plays,  a  dozen  of  them  fairly  often,  and  half  a 
dozen  over  and  over  again."  He  adds  that  he 
has  himself  seen  more  than  twenty-three.  I  do 
not  doubt  the  statement,  but  it  is  beside  the  mark. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  perhaps  a  dozen  of  Shake- 
speare's plays  hold  the  stage,  but  certainly  not  by 
virtue  of  their  poetry.  Rather,  it  may  be  well  be- 
lieved, in  spite  of  it.  Not  long  ago  I  saw,  as  did 
many  others  who  were  greatly  pleased  by  it,  a 
very  beautiful  performance  of  "  Romeo  and  Ju- 
liet "  given  with  wonderful  scenery  and  costume 
and  very  good  acting.  It  is  easy  to  say  of  such 
performances  that  they  are  very  pretty  but  not 
Shakespeare,  but  I  should  not  have  said  so  of  this 
one.  It  did  not  give  us  everything  of  Shakespeare, 
but  it  did  give  us  much.  I  do  not  think  that  ever 
before  was  I  so  impressed  with  the  beauty,  the 
pathos,  the  tragedy  of  the  old  story.  But  with 
all  that,  the  poetry  of  the  play  was  not  there :  the 
characters,  the  action,  the  situations,  the  settings 
were  strongly  given,  but  the  Shakespearean  poetry 
seemed  absent  in  spite  of  the  words.  In  the  beauti- 
ful scene  beginning : 

"  Wilt  thou  begone.?  It  is  not  yet  near  day," 

we  had  a  strong  and  realistic  presentation,  but  the 
poetry  of  it  seemed  to  me  to  have  vanished.  It  may 
be  that  the  lines  were  not  very  well  given,  but  I 


130  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

incline  to  think  that  the  reason  for  my  impression 
was  that  the  adequate  circumstance  dulled  the 
imagination,  that  the  realism  was  too  much  for  the 
poetry. 

Some  of  the  most  sympathetic  critics  of  Shake- 
speare have  held  some  such  notion.  Lamb  could 
not  bear  "  Lear  "  on  the  stage,  nor  Hazlitt  "  A 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream,"  and  both  for  the 
same  reason,  that  the  realism  destroyed  the 
poetry.  So  thought  one  at  least  who  saw  "  Ulys- 
ses "  a  year  or  so  ago. 

"  This  isle,"  says  Ulysses, 
*^  Set  in  the  glassy  ocean's  azure  swoon, 
With  sward  of  parsley  and  of  violet, 
And  poplars  shivering  in  a  silvery  dream, 
And  swell  of  cedar  lawn,  and  sandal  wood, 
And    these    low-crying    birds    that    haunt    the 
deep." 
Or 

**  Little  bewildered  ghosts  on  this  great  night ! 
They  flock  about  me — 

Wandering  on  their  way 
To  banks  of  asphodel  and  spirit  flowers. 
Ah,  a  girl's  face !  A  boy  there  with  bright  hair !  '* 

Are  not  those  exquisite  passages?  Surely,  but 
what  have  they  to  do  with  the  theatre.?  Cer- 
tainly the  stage  setting  of  "  Ulysses  "  was  ade- 


STEPHEN  PHILLIPS  131 

quate.  Many  of  the  scenes  were  extremely  beauti- 
ful. I  remember  the  gradual  taking  form  and 
shape  of  the  coast  of  Ithaca  as  being  particularly 
so.  But  for  all  that  the  poetry  did  not  har- 
monise. 

To  revert  to  Shakespeare  once  more.  I  am 
inclined  (in  my  dry-as-dust,  academic,  mole-like 
way)  to  account  for  his  practical  exclusion  from 
the  stage.  Managers  who  watch  the  public  mind 
say  that  Shakespeare  generally  lacks  "  heart-in- 
terest,'' that  he  presents  no  problems,  or  some- 
thing of  the  sort.     But  the  matter  lies  deeper. 

Shakespeare  wrote  his  plays  for  a  stage  very 
different  from  ours.  It  will  perhaps  be  said  that 
ours  is  better,  that  we  can  give  his  plays  much 
more  effectively  than  the  Globe  Theatre  could  do, 
and  also  that  Shakespeare  would  gladly  have  taken 
advantage  of  our  possibilities  had  he  been  able. 
These  things  may  be  so  and  yet  the  important 
thing  is  not,  say,  that  we  can  give  Shakespeare 
better  than  his  own  theatre  could,  but  that  we  da 
give  them  very  differently;  and  also,  not  that 
Shakespeare  would  have  written  with  pleasure  for 
a  more  developed  stage  than  he  had,  but  that  he 
did  write  especially  for  a  stage  less  developed  than 
our  own. 

It  is  wrong  to  imagine  Shakespeare  as  an  in- 
spired barbarian,  his  eye  in  fine  frenzy  rolling. 


132  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

pouring  out  poetry  for  posterity.  What  he 
really  thought  of  posterity  in  connection  with  his 
plays  may  never  be  known,  but  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  he  wrote  his  plays  with  a  definite  con- 
sideration of  just  the  conditions  under  which  they 
were  to  be  presented.  There  was  undoubtedly  an 
element  of  the  business  man  (surely  a  part  of 
Shakespeare)  dealing  with  the  business  proposi- 
tion, namely  the  Globe  Theatre  and  the  Lord 
Chamberlain's  men.  It  was  not  that  Shakespeare 
wrote  merely  to  please  the  public.  It  was  that  he 
knew  his  powers  so  well  that  he  could  easily  please 
the  public  and  be  a  poet  too.  So  he  dealt  with 
the  actual  conditions  in  his  own  way.  Instead  of 
grumbling  at  the  interruptions  of  his  comic  ac- 
tors, he  used  them  for  his  own  ends.  Instead  of 
shrugging  his  shoulders,  merely,  at  the  clumsy 
way  in  which  his  boy  heroines  managed  their 
skirts,  he  put  them  into  doublet  and  hose  when- 
ever he  could.  Instead  of  being  cribbed  and  con- 
fined by  the  simple  scaffold  of  a  stage,  he  used 
every  opportunity  given  him  by  the  stage-manage- 
ment of  his  day.  Instead  of  feeling  any  lack  of 
the  scenery  with  which  the  masques  of  Ben  Jon- 
son  were  beautified,  he  took  advantage  of  the 
chance  for  descriptive  poetry. 

And  he  produced  a  drama  very  appropriate  to 
the  Elizabethan  stage.     That  stage  relied  almost 


STEPHEN  PHILLIPS  133 

entirely  upon  the  dramatist  and  the  actor.  The 
dramatist  provided  a  mobile  and  fluent  dramatic 
poem,  and  the  actor  presented  it  with  his  best  abil- 
ity in  declamation  and  gesture.  Our  conception 
of  realism  at  the  theatre  was  unknown.  Our  idea 
of  spectacle  was  confined  to  the  amusements  of  the 
upper  classes. 

So  far  as  real  conditions  are  concerned  the 
Shakespearean  Hamlet  was  an  actor  clad  in  the 
costume  of  his  day,  standing  on  a  stage  in  the 
midst  of  the  audience,  even  surrounded  on  the 
stage  itself  by  a  half-circle  of  spectators.  Let 
us  think  of  that  when  next  we  see  the  melancholy 
Dane  in  appropriate  costume  (of  the  11th  century 
or  the  16th,  as  the  manager  happens  to  choose) 
seated  on  an  antique  chair  on  a  stage  that  gives 
with  historical  accuracy  all  the  circumstance  of 
the  palace  of  Elsinore.  And  if  we  will  so  think,  let 
us  ask  whether  the  poetry  written  for  the  situa- 
tion in  which  there  was  nothing  else  will  be  likely 
to  satisfy  our  hearts  when  our  eyes  are  glutted  by 
the  brilliant  actuality  that  has  become  so  impor- 
tant to  us. 

I  think  not.  The  poet  at  the  present  day  who 
writes  for  the  stage  deliberately  puts  himself  into 
competition  with  costume,  scenery,  and  music. 
Wagner  alone  has  consciously  sought  harmony 
in  such  competition,  and  with  Wagner  his  music 


184  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

has   certainly  triumphed  at  the  sacrifice  of  the 
rest. 

Mr.  Phillips  may  succeed  on  the  stage,  but  it 
will  be  in  spite  of  his  poetry  and  not  by  reason  of 
it.  Let  me  speak  again  of  the  newspaper  story, 
which  is  typical,  if  not  true.  When  he  read 
"  Herod ''  to  Mr.  Beerbohm  Tree,  the  actor-man- 
ager listened  without  remark  until  he  came  to  a 
place  where  there  was  the  sound  of  distant  trum- 
pets. At  this  he  began  to  have  confidence.  "  He 
had  not  known  that  I  had  been  an  actor,"  re- 
marked with  modest  pride  the  poet  who  had  seen 
pass  unnoticed  the  lines : 

"  And  all  behind  him  is 
A  sense  of  something  coming  on  the  world, 
A  crying  of  dead  prophets  from  their  tombs, 
A  singing  of  dead  poets  from  their  graves. 

I  ever  dread  the  young." 

No,  I  fear  that  poetry  has  no  place  on  our  stage 
and  that  she  will  not  have,  at  least  just  at  pres- 
ent. The  Elizabethan  drama  gave  poetry  to 
people  who  could  not  otherwise  get  it.  It  was 
public  poetry,  recited  for  those  who  could  not 
read.  Do  we  to-day  wish  to  listen  to  poetry.^  It 
may  be  a  doubtful  question,  but  I  inchne  to  think 
that  we  read  so  much  that  we  do  not  wish  merely 
to  listen  to  anything.     Who  is  there  when  some- 


STEPHEN  PHILLIPS  135 

thing  IS  read  aloud  from  a  newspaper,  but  wants  to 
take  the  paper  and  read  for  himself?  Who  is 
there  that  having  heard  a  poem  from  the  lips,  even 
of  a  good  reader,  does  not  wish  to  take  the  book 
in  his  own  hand  and  read  it.  Poetry  is  hardly 
a  public  art.  It  is  true  that  Lowell  read  an  Ode 
on  Commemoration  Day  and  Holmes  read  many 
poems  to  the  class  of  '29,  and  we  should  all  be  glad 
to  have  heard  either.  But  in  the  main  we  like  to 
have  our  poetry  in  the  privacy  of  our  firesides, 
of  our  pensive  citadels,  of  our  hearts.  I  have  no 
desire  to  hear  beautiful  poetry  in  a  crowd:  I  had 
rather  be  by  myself  and  have  it  alone.  So,  unless 
I  am  singular  in  this  respect,  poetry  will  not  flour- 
ish on  our  stage. 

The  attentive  and  logical  reader  will  probably 
incline  to  think  that  this  is  a  short-sighted  view 
in  a  period  which  has  produced  the  poetical 
dramas  of  Rostand,  and  various  others.  I  can- 
not help  that.  I  am  not  going  to  try  to  explain 
why  the  various  nations  of  Europe  are  different. 
The  French  theatre  is  different  from  ours  and  so 
IS  French  poetry.  "  To  what  shall  we  attribute 
it,"  wrote  somebody  in  the  Quarterly  Review^ 
"  that  the  frivolous  and  ignorant  audience  of 
Paris,  content  with  a  dark  and  heavy  house,  a 
dirty  scene,  and  six  fiddlers,  shall  listen  with 
earnest    attention    to    a    lifeless    translation    of 


136  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

*  Philoctetes,'  while  the  phlegmatic  and  reflecting 
citizens  of  London,  in  a  gaudy  house  glittering 
with  innumerable  lights,  demand  show  and  song 
and  bustle  and  procession  and  supernumerary 
murders,  even  in  the  animated  plays  of  Shake- 
speare? .  .  .  But,  whatever  the  cause,  the  fact 
is  undoubted,  and  whoever  writes  for  the  theatre 
must  submit  to  take  it  into  account."  That  was 
nearly  a  century  ago;  to-day  the  circumstances 
are  very  different,  but  not  the  essential  fact.  I 
follow  the  advice  and  take  account  of  it  in  my 
view  that,  whatever  may  be  the  tendency  and 
nature  of  the  Latin  races,  the  English  and  Ameri- 
cans do  not  value  poetry  at  the  theatre  or  any- 
where else  in  public. 

Of  course  it  does  not  follow  that  because  poetry 
is  not  for  the  stage,  there  can  be  nothing  for  the 
stage  but  costume  and  scenery.  There  is  room  for 
much  else,  and  whatever  be  its  name,  it  is  some- 
thing which  will  always  tend  to  make  the  stage 
finer  the  more  of  it  there  is.  There  is  a  passage 
in  Byron's  "Manfred  "that  will  illustrate  the  mat- 
ter better  than  I  can  explain  it.  It  comes  in  that 
scene  in  the  Hall  of  Arimanes  where  the  phantom 
of  Astarte  rises  and  stands  in  the  midst.  Manfred 
speaks : 

"  Astarte !  My  beloved !  speak  to  me : 
I  have  so  much  endured — so  much  endure— 


STEPHEN  PHILLIPS  18T 

Look  on  me !   The  grave  hath  not  changed  thee 

more 
Than  I  am  changed  for  thee.    Thou  lovedst  me 
Too  much,  as  I  loved  thee ;  we  were  not  made 
To  torture  thus  each  other,  though  it  were 
The  deadliest  sin  to  love  as  we  have  loved. 
Say  that  thou  loath'st  me  not — that  I  do  bear 
This  punishment  for  both — that  thou  wilt  be 
One  of  the  blessed — and  that  I  shall  die ; 
For  hitherto  all  hateful  things  conspire 
To  bind  me  in  existence — in  a  life 
Which  makes  me  shrink  from  immortality — 
A  future  like  the  past.    I  cannot  rest. 
I  know  not  what  I  ask  nor  what  I  seek ; 
I  feel  but  what  thou  art,  and  what  I  am ; 
And  I  would  hear  yet  once  before  I  perish 
The  voice  that  was  my  music — speak  to  me  T 
For  I  have  called  on  thee  in  the  still  night. 
Startled  the  slumbering  birds  from  the  hushed 

boughs. 
And  woke  the  mountain  wolves,  and  made  the 

caves 
Acquainted  with  thy  vainly  echoed  name. 
Which    answered    me — ^many    things    answered 

me — 
Spirits  and  men — but  thou  wert  silent  all. 
Yet  speak  to  me !   I  have  outwatched  the  stars,. 
And  gazed  o'er  heaven  in  vain  search  of  thee. 


138  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

Speak  to  me !  I  have  wandered  o'er  the  earth, 

And  never  found  thy  likeness — speak  to  me ! 

Look  on  the  fiends  around — they  feel  for  me ; 

I  fear  them  not  and  feel  for  thee  alone — 

Speak  to  me !  though  it  be  in  wrath — ^but  say — 

I  reck  not  what — but  let  me  hear  thee  once — 

This  once — once  more! 

Phantom  of  Astarte.     Manfred. 

Manfred.  Say  on,  say  on — I  live  but  in  the 
sound — it  is  thy  voice! 

Phantom.  Manfred!  To-morrow  ends  thine 
earthly  ills.    Farewell. 

Manfred.    Yet  one  word  more — am  I  forgiven.'^ 

Phantom.     Farewell ! 

Manfred.     Say  shall  we  meet  again  .^ 

Phantom.    Farewell ! 

Manfred.  One  word  for  mercy!  Say  thou 
lovest  me — 

Phantom.     Manfred ! '' 

(The  Phantom  disappears.) 

I  presume  that  the  imaginative,  the  apprecia- 
tive, the  artistic  reader  of  this  passage  is  always 
profoundly  moved  by  it.  I  was  never  specially 
moved  until  I  saw  the  play  given  upon  the  stage. 
Then,  amid  a  good  deal  of  frippery  and  fooUsh- 
ness,  the  intonation  alone  of  that  last  word  "  Man- 
fred ! "  gave  the  whole  scene  a  glory  that  it  has 


STEPHEN  PHILLIPS  189 

never  lost.  In  a  life  in  which  (like  most)  much 
average  work  and  play,  much  old  commonplace  and 
new  experience  tends  to  dull  the  keen  sense  of  the 
beauty  of  bygone  moments,  there  remains  to  me 
always  the  poignant  passion  of  that  voice  as  from 
the  open  tomb,  giving  an  emotion  so  intense  that 
current  reality,  even,  fades  before  it  into  a  forgot- 
ten dream.  Some  readings  in  Heredia,  the  sight  of 
the  Winged  Victory  as  she  stands  at  the  head  of 
the  staircase,  the  Garden  act  of  "  Tristan,"  the 
first  thrilling  dehght  at  the  pictures  of  Rembrandt 
— ^not  to  mention  matters  that  do  not  belong  here 
— ^none  have  a  surer  place  in  my  recollection  than 
this.  I  could  say  as  Hazlitt  said  of  the  Man  with 
the  Glove :  "  What  a  look  is  there.  .  .  that  draws 
the  evil  out  of  human  life,  that  while  we  look  at  it 
transfers  the  same  sentiment  to  our  own  breasts 
and  makes  us  feel  as  if  nothing  mean  or  httle 
could  disturb  us  again." 

But  this  is  not  the  poetry  but  the  situation.  And 
it  is  the  situation  that  the  drama,  and  especially  on 
the  stage,  can  give  as  nothing  else  can.  Everybody 
can  parallel  the  case,  from  the  prose  drama  as 
well  as  the  poetic — I  could  say  myself  a  passage 
in  the  third  act  of  "  Sodom's  Ende"  ("Reinheit !") 
as  well  as  the  end  of  the  third  act  of  "  L'Aiglon." 
And  those  who  go  much  to  the  theatre  count  on 
such  moments,  for  they  are  far  more  a  possibility 


140  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

for  the  stage  than  for  literature  or  even  poetry. 
I  cannot  recall  a  case  in  my  seeing  Shakespeare 
save  where  Mr.  Booth  sprang  up  after  the  play 
in  "  Hamlet." 

But  to  return  to  Mr.  Phillips.  It  was  prob- 
ably this  electric  moment  that  Mr.  Tree  noticed 
when  he  heard  of  the  trumpets  in  Herod.  Mr. 
Phillips,  as  a  former  actor,  doubtless  knows  a  dra- 
matic situation.  Whether  he  has  power  to  create 
one  of  the  first  order  is  another  matter.  There 
are  situations  and  situations;  a  single  melodrama 
may  have  a  dozen.  But  will  they  be  real  ones.'^ 
One  needs  the  stage  to  judge.  So  far  as  reading 
is  concerned,  I  should  say  we  had  one  at  the  very 
end  of  "  Herod." 

Of  course  one  hopes  that  Mr.  Phillips  will 
create  more,  for  if  he  does  he  is  a  friend  to  the 
human  race,  immeasurably  lightening  its  miseries 
and  adding  to  its  joys.  To  have  a  wonderful 
possession  of  that  sort  is  a  great  thing.  Even 
so,  however,  what  has  it  to  do  with  poetry,  unless 
it  be  that  poetry  is  smuggled  in  along  with  the 
drama  for  literary  respectability's  s^ke,  as  some 
earnest  critics  would  have  us  believe  that  an  idea 
may  be  smuggled  into  poetry  as  a  sort  of  ballast? 

Mr.  Phillips  has  written  very  charming  poetry, 
some  lines  of  which  are  apropos  here.  They 
occur  in  the  words  of  Idas  to  Marpessa. 


STEPHEN  PHILLIPS  141 

**  Not  for  this  only  do  I  love  thee,  but 

Because  infinity  upon  thee  broods ; 

And  thou  art  full  of  whispers  and  of  shadows. 

Thou  meanest  what  the  sea  has  striven  to  say 

So  long,  and  yearned  up  the  cliffs  to  tell ; 

Thou  art  what  all  the  winds  have  uttered  not, 

What  the  still  night  suggesteth  to  the  heart. 

Thy  voice  is  like  to  music  heard  ere  birth, 

Some  spirit  lute  touched  on  a  spirit  sea ; 

Thy  face  remembered  is  from  other  worlds, 

It  has  been  died  for,  though  I  know  not  when, 

It  has  been  sung  of,  though  I  know  not  where. 

It  has  the  strangeness  of  the  luring  West, 

And  of  sad  sea-horizons ;  beside  thee 

I  am  aware  of  other  times  and  lands. 

Of  birth  far  back,  of  lives  in  many  stars. 

O  beauty  lone,  and  like  a  candle  clear 

In  this  dark  country  of  the  world !    Thou  art 

My  woe,  my  early  light,  my  music  dying." 

Those  are  very  beautiful  lines,  but  if  they  rightly 
represent  Mr.  Phillips'  power,  do  they  not  mark 
his  language  at  least  as  not  dramatic? 

But  if  a  man  write  dramas — poetic  or  not — 
for  which  the  stage  can  do  but  little,  it  does  not 
follow  that  the  dramas  are  without  value.  Of 
course  the  judgment  of  half  a  dozen  theatrical 
critics  or  of  a  whole  theatrical  audience  will  never 


142  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

establish  that.  They  may  say,  or  show  clearly 
by  their  actions,  that  the  play  Is  not  suited  to  the 
stage, — of  which  the  purpose  Is  not  so  much,  as 
an  eminent  lover  of  the  theatre  Is  said  to  have 
remarked,  "  to  hold  the  mirror  up  to  nature  "  as 
it  Is  rather  to  offer  the  public  a  very  special  and 
delightful  kind  of  pleasure.  But  a  drama  may 
not  be  In  the  least  suited  to  the  stage,  and  yet  be 
a  very  good  thing  for  all  that.  There  are  and 
have  been  many  stages — Greek,  Elizabethan, 
French,  our  own,  not  to  mention  Chinese  and 
Japanese;  no  play  was  ever  written  that  could 
suit  them  all,  although  each  form  of  theatre  must 
offer  some  opportunity  for  creating  the  true  dra- 
matic thrill.  A  play  cannot  be  good  for  all; 
perhaps  It  may  be  good  for  none,  and  yet  be  a 
source  of  very  great  pleasure  to  "  those  that  like 
that  sort  of  thing." 

Just  what  that  sort  of  thing  is,  is  not  a  very 
difficult  matter  to  state.  There  Is  a  convenience 
in  the  dramatic  form  that  enables  some  men  to 
express  themselves  better  in  that  way  than  in  any 
other.  Browning  was  a  man  of  that  kind:  he  had 
a  curiosity  In  regard  to  life  and  a  sympathy  for 
living  people  that  made  him  enter  into  his  char- 
acters and  speak  for  them,  as  It  were.  He  did 
so  in  his  first  poem,  "  Pauline,''  which  was  a  mono- 
logue ;  in  his  second,  "  Paracelsus,"  which  was  a 


STEPHEN  PHILLIPS  148 

dramatic  poem  with  no  possibilities  for  the  stage; 
and  he  did  so  in  "  Strafford,"  which  he  made  a 
regular  stage-play  for  Macready.  Then — if  I 
may  touch  dangerous  ground  for  a  moment — ^he 
wrote  "  Sordello."  Tennyson,  the  story  goes, 
said  he  understood  but  two  lines  in  this  poem — 
the  first  and  last — and  that  neither  was  true. 
Now,  the  lines  are  as  follows : 

"  Who  will  may  hear  Bordello's  story  told.'* 

"  Who  would  has  heard  Sordello's  story  told." 

It  may  be  admitted  that  "  Sordello  "  is  not  a  very 
simple  narrative,  but  it  certainly  is  a  narrative. 
The  lines  are  quite  true,  for  the  story  is  told — 
well  or  ill,  of  course — that  is,  it  is  not  in  dramatic 
form.  Browning  explains  this  at  the  beginning 
of  the  poem,  in  a  passage  which  was  presumably 
beyond  Tennyson's  comprehension,  but  which  now, 
thanks  to  sixty  years  of  Browning  clubs,  will  be 
as  clear  as  cosmic  jelly. 

"  Never,  I  should  warn  you  first, 
Of  my  own  choice  had  this,  if  not  the  worst, 
Yet  not  the  best  expedient,  served  to  tell 
A  story  I  could  body  forth  so  well 
By  making  speak,  myself  kept  out  of  view, 
The  very  man  as  he  was  wont  to  do. 
And  leaving  you  to  say  the  rest  for  him.'* 


144  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

That  puts  the  matter  fairly  enough:  Browning 
liked  to  let  the  man  speak  for  himself,  so  he  com- 
monly wrote  in  dramatic  form.  When  he  under- 
took to  tell  the  tale  himself  the  results  were  not 
so  good.  The  same  desire  came  over  Tennyson 
as  he  grew  older,  and,  though  his  earlier  poems 
are  mostly  narratives,  his  later  volumes  are  full 
of  dramatic  poetry.  Every  dramatic  poem  is  not 
a  play,  but  a  play  is  dramatic  poetry  of  the  most 
developed  and  fullest  kind.  Browning  and  Ten- 
nyson both  wrote  plays  as  well  as  other  forms  of 
dramatic  poetry,  and  so  have  various  poets,  often 
without  much  thought  of  the  stage,  like  Byron. 

After  all,  why  not.?  I  think  some  of  Mr. 
Phillips'  best  poetry  is  in  his  plays.  I  have 
quoted  lines  from  "  Ulysses "  and  some  from 
"  Herod."  Here  are  some  from  "  Paolo  and 
Francesca  " : 

Francesca.  "  All  ghostly  grew  the  sun,  unreal 
the  air. 
Then  when  we  kissed. 

Paolo,  And  in  that  kiss  our  souls 
Together  flashed,  and  now  they  are  one  flame, 
Which  nothing  can  put  out,  nothing  divide. 
Francesca.    Kiss  me  again!     I  smile  at  what 

may  chance. 
Paolo.  Again  and  yet  again !  and  here  and  here. 


STEPHEN  PHILLIPS  145 

Let  me  with  kisses  burn  this  body  away, 
That  our  two  souls  may  dart  together  free. 
I  fret  at  intervention  of  the  flesh, 
And  would  clasp  you — ^you  that  but  Inhabit 
This  lovely  house. 

Francesca,  Break  open  then  the  door. 
And  let  my  spirit  out." 

I  have  not  seen  the  play  acted.  But  those  who^ 
saw  it  on  the  stage,  did  they  not  perhaps  "  fret  at 
interference  of  the  flesh"?  It  would  seem  as  if 
it  might  well  be  so,  as  one  reads  that  fourth  act. 
After  all,  is  it  the  actual  love  aff^air  that  attracts 
us,  that  common  Intrigue  so  like  a  thousand  others 
save  for  the  Intensity  of  Its  passion?  Do  we  want 
to  see  two  live,  beautiful,  charmingly  dressed 
young  people  In  each  other's  arms?  I  think 
hardly.  It  Is  the  essence  of  the  poetry,  the  soul 
going  out  of  Itself,  that  we  want,  and  that  Is  in 
the  lines.  There  Is  another  "  Francesca  "  on  the 
stage,  and  that,  I  am  told,  has  too  much  real  blood 
in  It.  I  should  think  it  likely.  Real  blood,  Uke  a 
real  pump  or  any  realistic  setting,  distracts  the 
mind,  which  for  the  time  would  be  conscious  only 
of  Its  own  emotion.  It  Is  like  a  magic-lantern 
show  going  on  with  the  curtain  raised  and  day- 
light coming  In. 

Mr.  Phillips  has  power  to  stir  those  subtle  ele- 


146  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

ments  of  our  being  that  respond  to  poetry.  It 
seems  that  he  wishes  also  to  stir  us  in  a  different 
way.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  he  will  not  be  like  the 
dog  with  the  bone  in  his  mouth,  who  lost  his  own 
chop  in  trying  to  get  another.  Or,  rather,  the  fig- 
ure is  wrong,  for  it  is  we  who  lose,  if  loss  there  be. 
Mr.  Phillips  will  always  have  the  satisfaction  of 
being  a  poet. 


MAETERLINCK 

It  was  some  years  before  M.  Rostand  became 
a  familiar  figure  in  the  literature  of  the  time  that 
M.  Maeterlinck  appeared,  and  in  a  very  different 
manner.  Although  a  dramatist,  he  became  known 
from  the  printed  versions  of  his  plays.  It  was  in 
1893  that  translations  of  his  earlier  plays  were 
published  in  America,  and  up  to  that  time  few  in 
this  country  had  ever  heard  of  him,  fewer  were 
acquainted  with  his  work,  and  none  had  ever  seen 
his  works  upon  the  stage. 

M.  Maeterlinck  was  introduced  to  the  wider 
world  of  letters  under  the  cloud  of  comparison 
with  Shakespeare.  In  America  and  England,  at 
least,  he  was  therefore  received  with  a  smile,  as  one 
of  those  humorous  "  movements  "  that  flutter  after 
each  other  like  exquisite  humming-birds  through 
the  Parisian  world  of  letters.  He  had  been  called, 
by  M.  Octave  Mirbeau  in  the  Figaro,  the  Belgian 
Shakespeare.  If  he  had  been  called  the  OUendorf 
Shakespeare,  the  Puppetshow  Shakespeare,  or  the 
Nursery  Shakespeare,  the  name  would  have  con- 
veyed more  accurately  the  impression  which  he 

147 


148  MAETERLINCK 

made  at  first.  Some  people  became  very  angry  at 
him:  Max  Nordau,  a  violent  person  of  that  day, 
called  him  a  mental  cripple,  an  idiotic  driveller, 
an  imbecile  plagiarist.  In  general,  people  merely 
could  not  understand  him  at  all,  though  they  could 
see  that  some  of  his  ways  were  funny.  The  well- 
known  dialogue — people  may  not  remember  that 
it  was  quite  as  remarkable  as  the  burlesques  on  it : 

MALEINE 

^  Wait !     I  am  beginning  to  see, 

NURSE 

Do  you  see  the  city.? 

MALEINE 

No. 

NURSE 

And  the  castle.'* 

MALEINE 

No. 

NURSE 

It  must  be  on  the  other  side. 

MALEINE 

And  yet    .    .    •    There  is  the  sea. 

NURSE 

There  is  the  sea.?* 

MALEINE 

Yes,  yes ;  the  sea.     It  is  green. 


MAETERLINCK  149 

NURSE 

But  then  you  ought  to  see  the  city.  Let  us 
look. 

MALEINE 

I  see  the  Kghthouse. 

NUESE 

You  see  the  lighthouse? 

MALEINE 

Yes;  I  think  it  is  the  lighthouse. 

NURSE 

But,  then,  you  ought  to  see  the  city. 

MALEINE 

I  do  not  see  the  city. 

NURSE 

You  do  not  see  the  city? 

MALEINE 

I  do  not  see  the  city. 

NURSE 

Do  you  see  the  belfry? 

MALEINE   . 

No. 

NURSE 

This  is  extraordinary." 

It  was,  very.  There  were  undoubtedly  things 
to  be  said  for  such  dialogue;  still  it  was  funny, 
though  not  uproariously  so.     Then  his  princesses, 


150  MAETERLINCK 

the  babies  with  long  hair:  in  one  piece  seven  of 
them,  each  as  infantile  as  all  the  others  put  to- 
gether— no  one  takes  them  seriously.  There  was 
certainly  a  good  deal  that  was  humorous  about 
M.  Maeterlinck. 

Nor  did  those  who  admired  his  work  always  hit 
upon  just  the  right  things.  I  will  here  mention 
myself  5  merely  as  an  example  of  one  who  was  much 
taken  with  M.  Maeterlinck's  first  writings  and  yet 
was  quite  unable  to  see  what  has  turned  out  to  be 
the  important  thing  in  them.  It  chanced  that 
another  poet  published  about  the  same  time  a  col- 
lection of  dramatic  pieces  which  resembled  in  some 
ways  M.  Maeterlinck's  plays.  It  is  not  important 
whether  or  no  they  were  imitations — probably  not. 
But  they  were  very  like  them,  and  I  allow  myself 
to  quote  a  few  lines  written  ten  years  ago  about 
them. 

It  was  under  the  title  "  The  Antennae  of 
Poetry,"  and  although  the  article  itself  showed 
little  critical  keenness  or  foresight,  the  title,  as 
appeared  later,  was  not  a  bad  one.  In  my  then 
view  people  like  Maeterlinck  were  experimental- 
ists, and  fulfilled  a  useful  function  in  poetry,  or 
any  other  kind  of  art,  being  always  on  the  lookout 
for  things  that  were  new,  amusing,  or  edifying. 
And  in  what  they  offered,  as  in  these  cases,  the 
interesting  thing  lay  largely  in  the  mode  of  ap- 


MAETERLINCK  151 

preciatlon  or  presentation.  "  They  are  not  con- 
ceived,'*  I  remarked,  "  in  any  approach  to  the 
classic  manner,  but  in  a  manner  ultra-romantic. 
For  although  the  main  emotion  is  always  present 
before  us,  it  is  not  presented  simply,  but  always 
by  means  of  a  multitude  of  extremely  fine  and  deli- 
cate nuances,  indefinite  hopes  and  fears,  presenti- 
ments, imaginings  and  spiritual  accompaniments, 
premonitions  almost  occult,  faint  ripples  of  emo- 
tion, little  wavelets  that  skim  over  the  waves  of 
passion."  Such  to  my  mind  was  the  character- 
istic of  Mr.  Sharpens  work,  and  of  M.  Maeter- 
linck's, too,  except  that  the  latter  was  more  of  a 
true  dramatist,  having  greater  power  of  drawing 
character. 

It  was  not  very  clever  of  me  to  have  found 
nothing  more  to  say  on  the  first  five  plays  of  M. 
Maeterlinck.  That  I  should  have  entirely  missed 
the  real  purport  of  his  idea  and  been  wholly  taken 
up  by  the  accessories,  shows  one  of  the  practical 
difficulties  that  any  one  has  to  meet  in  dealing  with 
a  new  eff^ort  of  romanticism.  What  I  noticed,  the 
general  tone  and  method,  the  character-drawing, 
all  that  amounted  to  nothing;  M.  Maeterlinck 
would  have  been  himself  without  either  quality. 

One  thing  in  the  article,  however,  was,  I  believe, 
good,  and  that,  as  I  have  just  said,  was  the  title. 
Not  in  precisely  the  manner  in  which  I  conceived 


t 


152  MAETERLINCK 

it,  but  still  in  a  way  near  enough  to  mention  was 
the  name  significant.  And  this  I  say,  not  because 
I  think  so  myself,  but  because  almost  the  same 
phrase  was  afterward  used  by  Maeterlinck  in 
"  Le  Tresor  des  Humbles,"  published  some  time 
afterward,  when  he  spoke  of  Novalis  as  "  one  of 
those  extraordinary  beings  who  are  the  antennae 
of  the  human  soul."  That  was  not  precisely  the 
same  thing,  but  it  came  rather  near  it.  I  was 
thinking  of  poetry,  and  Maeterlinck  was  thinking 
of  life.  As  it  turned  out,  that  was  the  main  line 
of  his  interest.  People  who  considered  him  only 
as  a  curious  experimenter  in  dramatic  form  were 
wrong  about  him,  as  also  those  who  bothered  their 
heads  and  their  readers  by  talking  about  symbol- 
ism. Symbolist  he  may  have  been  to  some  degree, 
and  experimenter,  and  various  other  things.  But 
in  the  main  his  interest  was  in  philosophy,  and  has 
been  ever  since.  He  writes  plays  or  studies  the 
habits  of  bees,  not  merely  as  diversions,  but  as 
means  o£_expression  or  attainment  of  something 
concerning  the  problem  of  life. 

Before  the  publication  of  "  Le  Tresor  des 
Humbles,"  M.  Maeterlinck  had  been  known  as  a 
philosophic  man  of  letters.  Every  serious  author 
is  more  or  less  philosophic;  he  has  something  to 
say  of  the  general  principles  of  life ;  he  can  hardly 
avoid  having  some  philosophy,  although  he  may 


MAETERLINCK  153 

make  no  effort  to  state  it  systematically  or  even 
directly.  In  this  new  book,  however,  M.  Maeter- 
linck became  a  literary  philosopher  and  sketched 
for  his  readers  his  theory  of  life.  The  remark- 
able thing  about  the  book  was  not  that  M.  Maeter- 
linck should  have  a  philosophy,  but  that  he  should 
try  to  express  it  definitely,  for  the  main  idea  in 
style  of  his  previous  work  had  been  that  his 
thoughts  were  not  such  as  could  be  definitely  ex- 
pressed, and  indeed  that  idea  was  rather  the 
foundation  of  this  book.  Still,  for  all  that,  by 
"  Le  Tresor  des  Humbles  "  M.  Maeterlinck  pre- 
sented himself  as  a  philosopher  of  a  known  school, 
and  his  work  was  seen  to  have  a  place  in  a  known 
tendency  of  our  time. 

M.  Maeterlinck  now  appeared  to  be  a  mystic. 
The  name  Mystic  is  a  vague  one  and  comprehends 
people  as  far  apart  as  Plotinus  and  George  Fox. 
Mystics  are  perhaps  not  much  farther  known  than 
as  they  are  known  to  be  mystics.  Still  the  word 
gives  us  some  idea  of  a  standpoint.  A  mystic  I  /  yf 
take  to  be  a  person  who  believes  in  the  acquirement  / 
of  truth  by  intuition  rather  than  by  any  process 
of  reason  and  argument.  Thus  the  person  who 
sees  visions  is  a  mystic,  the  person  who  has  pre- 
sentiments, the  person  who  has  something  borne  in 
upon  him.  Any  one  who  believes  in  gaining  truth 
by  some  process  more  direct  than  the  ordinary 


164  MAETERLINCK 

process  of  rational  thought  is,  in  so  far,  a  mystic. 
There  have  been  Christian  mystics  and  mystics 
who  were  not  Christians;  the  word  has  been  very 
loosely  used.  M.  Maeterlinck,  like  others  in  what 
was  called  in  those  days  the  neo-Christian  move- 
ment, had  been  interested  in  Carlyle  and  Emerson, 
but  also  by  those  more  commonly  thought  of  as 
mystics — Eckhard,  Ruysbroek,  Boehme. 

His  particular  view,  however,  as  presented  in 
"  Le  Tresor  des  Humbles,"  was  not  the  mysticism 
of  any  of  these.  It  was,  I  believe,  his  own.  "  It 
is  idle,"  says  his  book  at  the  beginning,  "  to  think 
that  by  means  of  words,  any  real  communication 
can  ever  pass  from  one  man  to  another."  How, 
then.'*  By  Silence:  in  the  great  silent  moments 
of  life,  such  moments  as  everybody  knows,  experi- 
enced in  love,  sport,  work,  religion,  not  necessarily 
moments  of  great  emotion,  but  moments  in  which 
we  seem  to  become  aware  of  much.  It  is  M. 
Maeterlinck's  idea  that  in  such  moments  we  may 
become  aware  of  much;  indeed,  that  in  such  mo- 
ments only  do  we  get  to  know  anything  worth 
knowing.  Those  who  attune  themselves  to  such 
moments,  who  learn  to  use  them,  find  deep  mean- 
ings in  presentiments,  in  the  strange  impression 
produced  by  a  chance  meeting  or  a  look  (the 
words  are  in  the  main  Maeterlinck's  own),  in  the 
secret  laws  of  sympathy  and  antipathy,  of  elective 


MAETERLINCK  156 

and  instinctive  affinities,  in  the  overwhelming  in- 
fluence of  the  thing  that  had  not  been  spoken. 

The  precise  view  of  the  universe  which  M. 
Maeterlinck  held  to  result  from  such  moments,  or 
from  such  receptivity,  need  not  be  stated  just  here. 
What  is  of  interest  now  is  to  show  the  dramatic 
side  of  it.  It  is  obvious  that  such  an  idea  has  dra- 
matic possibilities.  In  the  matter  of  conveying 
an  idea  without  saying  anything — by  the  secret 
means  of  sympathy,  instinctive  affinity,  strange 
impression — ^Mme.  Sarah  Bernhardt  would  seem 
to  be  a  mystic  of  the  first  water.  It  was  not  pre- 
cisely such  powers,  however,  that  M.  Maeterlinck 
had  in  mind  when  he  thought  of  the  drama  as  a 
means  for  the  expression  of  his  idea.  What  he 
had  in  mind  he  said  in  an  essay  on  "  The  Tragical 
in  Daily  Life,"  a  short  statement  which  put  a 
whole  dramatic  art  into  a  nutshell.  For  a  phi- 
losopher of  M.  Maeterlinck's  type  the  essay  is  sin- 
gularly definite  and  logical  in  its  arrangement. 

First,  as  to  subject:  must  it  always  be  some 
violence.'^  "  Does  the  soul  flower  only  on  nights 
of  storm  .'^  Hitherto,  doubtless,  this  idea  has  pre- 
vailed." But  a  new  idea  is  becoming  known,  and 
he  turns  to  painting  to  show  that  Marius  triumph- 
ing over  the  Cimbrians,  or  the  assassination  of  the 
Duke  of  Guise,  is  no  longer  the  type.  The  painter 
*'  will  place  on  his  canvas  a  house  lost  in  the  heart 


166  MAETERLINCK 

of  the  country,  an  open  door  at  the  end  of  a 
passage,  a  face  and  hands  at  rest,  and  by  these 
simple  images  will  he  add  to  our  consciousness  of 
life,  which  is  a  possession  that  it  is  no  more  pos- 
sible to  lose.''  Nor  will  the  drama  deal  with  '^x- 
/fcraordinary  convulsions  of  life;  why  should  the 
dramatist  imagine  that  we  shall  delight  in  witness- 
ing the  very  same  acts  that  brought  joy  to  the 
hearts  of  the  barbarians,  with  whom  murder,  out- 
rage, and  treachery  were  matters  of  daily  occur- 
rence ? 

So  much  for  subject:  next,  M.  Maeterlinck 
spoke  of  action,  or,  rather,  the  lack  of  it — and 
presented  his  view  of  a  "  static  theatre,"  namely, 
a  drama  in  which  there  was  no  action  at  all,  a 
view  which  followed  naturally  from  his  conception 
of  subject,  which  suggests  the  question.  Are  these 
motives  suitable  to  the  drama?  It  has  only  been 
shown  that  they  are  possible  in  painting,  which 
is  something  very  different.  It  is  under  this  head 
that  one  comes  on  the  locus  classicus  of  the  static 
dramaturgy. 

"  I  admire  Othello,  but  he  does  not  appear  to  me 
to  live  the  august  daily  life  of  Hamlet,  who  has 
time  to  live,  inasmuch  as  he  does  not  act.  Othello 
is  admirably  jealous.  But  is  it  not  perhaps  an 
ancient  error  to  imagine  that  it  is  at  the  moments 
when  this  passion,  or  others  of  equal  violence,  pos- 


MAETERLINCK  157 

sesses  us,  that  we  live  our  truest  lives?  I  have 
grown  to  believe  that  an  old  man,  seated  in  his 
armchair,  waiting  patiently,  with  his  lamp  beside 
him ;  giving  unconscious  ear  to  all  the  eternal  laws 
that  reign  about  his  house,  interpreting,  without 
comprehending,  the  silence  of  doors  and  windows 
and  the  quivering  voice  of  the  hght,  submitting 
with  bent  head  to  the  presence  of  his  soul  and  his 
destiny — an  old  man  who  conceives  not  that  all 
the  powers  of  this  world,  like  so  many  heedful 
servants,  are  mingling  and  keeping  vigil  in  his 
room,  who  suspects  not  that  the  very  sun  itself  is 
supporting  in  space  the  little  table  against  which 
he  leans,  or  that  every  star  in  heaven  and  every 
fibre  of  the  soul  are  directly  concerned  in  the  move- 
ment of  an  eyelid  that  closes,  or  a  thought  that 
springs  to  birth — ^I  have  grown  to  believe  that  he, 
motionless  as  he  is,  does  yet  live  in  reality  a  deeper, 
more  human,  and  more  universal  life  than  the 
lover  who  strangles  his  mistress,  the  captain  who 
conquers  in  battle,  or  *  the  husband  who  avenges 
his  honour.' " 

And  finally  as  to  the  dialogue.  It  is  the  com- 
mon opinion  that  the  words  of  a  play  should  be 
directed  especially  to  the  action  of  the  play,  and, 
theoretically,  one  would  be  likely  to  say  that  there 
should  not  be  any  word  at  all  that  should  not  get 
the  action  ahead.     M.  Maeterlinck  pronounces  to. 


158  MAETERLINCK 

the  contrary.  The  only  words  that  count  in  his 
view  are  those  that  at  first  seem  quite  useless.  It 
is  the  words  which  are  caused  by  the  demands  and 
necessities  of  the  case  that  are  as  insignificant  as 
the  action  itself.  Who  thinks  that  the  best  con- 
versation at  dinner  consists  in  asking  for  the 
salt,  or  saying  you  will  have  some  bread  .^^  Here 
the  only  words  of  high  worth  are  the  useless  ones. 
So  in  the  drama,  says  M.  Maeterlinck,  who,  by 
the  way,  does  not  use  so  material  a  figure.  It  is 
the  super-essential  meaning  that  we  must  open 
our  ears  for;  it  is  that  which  we  must  get  if  we 
are  to  get  anything  at  all. 

All  of  which  is  very  systematically  reasoned  out 
on  a  basis  not  at  all  difficult  to  understand. 

What,  then,  were  the  dramas  made  upon  this 
basis,  so  diflTerent  from  the  common  theory  of  the 
day.'*  A  theme  from  the  simplest  daily  life,  an 
action  where  nothing  happens,  a  dialogue  where 
the  only  words  of  value  are  the  meaningless  ones. 
One  will  readily  suppose  that  any  drama  made  on 
such  principles  will  excite  all  the  astonishment 
that  was  shown  on  the  first  appearance  of  the 
plays  of  Maeterlinck. 

It  will  be  a  surprise  to  those  who  do  not  remem- 
ber, to  learn  that  the  only  plays  of  M.  Maeter- 
linck's first  publication  that  were  received  with 
scoffing  were  those  in  which  he  did  not  carry  out  his 


MAETERLINCK  159 

principles,  so  that  people  could  recognise  them. 
"  La  Princesse  Maleine "  and  "  Les  Sept  Prin- 
cesses "  were  the  two  of  his  first  four  dramas  that 
excited  great  derision.  But  "  Les  Aveugles  "  and 
"L'Intrus  " — where  theme,  action,  and  dialogue  v 
follow  his  own  ideas — were  received  with  respect. 

The  first-mentioned  plays  do  notrostensibly  at 
least,  carry  out  M.  Maeterlinck's  ideas.  What  is 
the  action  of  "  La  Princesse  Maleine  "  ?  Marius 
and  the  Duke  of  Guise  shrink  into  insignificance 
in  comparison  with  this  little  lady  who  goes 
through  battles  and  murders  to  sudden  death. 
How  is  it  with  the  "  Seven  Princesses  "  ?  If  their 
souls  do  not  flourish  in  a  night  of  storm  it  is  cer- 
tainly in  a  period  of  strange  agitations.  In  these 
two  plays  we  have  nothing  simple,  natural,  nor- 
mal; all  is  as  wild  as  the  delights  of  our  despised 
ancestors. 

But  in  "  L'Intrus  "  it  is  not  so.  It  is  not  a 
remarkable  scene,  only  a  family  around  the  even- 
ing table.  Nothing  remarkable  occurs;  indeed, 
nothing  at  all  occurs,  that  we  can  see.  Nothing 
is  said  of  any  importance  save  as  we  happen  to 
perceive  the  importance  of  chance  words,  and  yet 
what  a  powerful  little  piece  it  is.  How  it  goes 
on  the  stage  I  do  not  know  (nor  much  care  till  I 
may  chance  to  see  it),  but  one  cannot  read  it  with- 
out feeling  its  power.     "  Les  Aveugles ''  is  not 


160  MAETERLINCK 

quite  so  consistent ;  it  is  not  a  matter  of  ordinary 
occurrence  for  a  priest  to  lead  a  party  of  the 
blind  whom  he  is  overseeing,  into  a  wood,  and  then 
suddenly  die.  But  the  piece  is  almost  as  effective 
as  the  other. 

These  two  pieces  made  their  impression  with 
perfect  sureness,  even  though  conceived  according 
to  the  curious  theories  we  have  just  noted.  It  is 
true  that  the  ideas  which  they  conveyed  were  not 
hard  to  grasp:  the  approach  of  death,  the  posi- 
tion of  humanity  with  a  dead  church.  There  may 
have  been  ideas  signified  in  "  La  Princesse  Ma- 
leine  "  and  "  Les  Sept  Princesses,''  but  they  could 
not  be  so  readily  imagined.  Yet  M.  Maeterlinck's 
theory  was,  in  a  measure,  justified  by  these  two 
failures,  for  whatever  ideas  these  plays  may  have 
meant  to  convey  was  lost  in  the  extravagance  of 
the  subject  and  the  action,  even  though  the  dia- 
logue was  as  simple  as  in  the  others. 

Indeed  it  is  now  apparent  that,  in  spite  of 
theory  and  in  spite  of  failure,  these  two  were  the 
typical  pieces.  The  others  presented,  curiously, 
it  is  true,  but  by  a  symbolism  by  no  means  un- 
common, ideas  that  could  readily  be  expressed  in 
other  ways,  and  have  often  been  so  expressed. 
"  There  is  a  stillness  of  death,"  says  the  Father 
in  "  L'Intrus,"  and  reminds  us  that  it  is  all  based 
upon  a  common  and  everyday  conception,  and  that 


MAETERLINCK  161 

It  represents  no  new  truth  and  indeed  no  truth  at 
all.  The  ideas  are  common  and  have  been  often 
expressed.  It  was  M.  MaeterHnck's  desire  to 
present  ideas  that  had  not  been  expressed,  that 
could  not  be  expressed  by  common  means.  Let  us 
imagine  that  he  wished  to  convey  something  in 
"  La  Princesse  Maleine  "  and  in  "  Les  Sept  Prin- 
cesses " ;  it  is  not  necessary,  nor  at  present  useful, 
to  try  to  determine  what  it  was,  but  the  very 
nature  of  the  plays  leads  us  to  the  belief  that  it 
was  not  anything  that  could  be  conveyed  by  usual 
dramatic  methods. 

With  this  idea  in  mind  we  may  turn  to  "  Pelleas 
et  Melisande."  We  shall  find  it  in  form  at  least, 
like  the  plays  just  mentioned,  something  contrary 
to  the  theories  of  dramatic  art  which  the  author 
had  put  forward  not  long  before.  But  as  those 
theories  were  founded  upon  a  definite  and  intelli- 
gible system  (however  we  may  disagree  with  it), 
we  may  be  sure  that  the  opposition  is  but  super- 
ficial. "  Pelleas  et  Melisande  "  is  a  play  of  love 
and  revenge,  like  various  others;  it  has  a  suffi- 
ciently definite  action,  like  an  ordinary  play;  it 
has  a  dialogue  which  carries  that  action  along, 
as  the  common  stage  dialogue  does.  It  would 
seem  that  M.  Maeterlinck  had  persuaded  himself 
that  what  appeared  to  be  characteristic  in 
"  L'Intrus  "  and  "  Les  Aveugles  "  was  not  essen- 


/ 


162  MAETERLINCK 

tial,  that  he  could  gain  his  effects  In  the  manner 
of  a  conventional  play.  He  therefore  has  ordi- 
nary subject,  action,  dialogue.  If  we  would  get 
at  his  idea,  then,  we  must  neglect  these  convention- 
alities and  see  what  is  left. 

The  story  of  a  man  whose  wife  falls  in  love  with 
his  brother  is  not  essential;  if  it  were  we  should 
suppose  that  M.  Maeterlinck  had  something  es- 
sential in  common  with  Stephen  Phillips,  which 
would  probably  lead  us  into  neglect  of  the  chief 
virtues  of  each.  The  strange  region  of  romance 
with  its  castles  and  caverns,  its  midnight  meetings 
and  violent  murderings,  that  too  is  not  essen- 
tial ;  if  it  were,  we  might  imagine  that  we  had  to  do 
with  a  man  like  M.Rostand  or  Hauptmann, though 
this  is  pre-Raphaelite  romance  and  theirs  is  ro- 
mance of  very  different  kind.  But  the  story,  the 
setting  of  "  Pelleas  et  Melisande  "  have  too  much 
in  common  with  other  plays  for  us  to  think  that 
they  are  of  prime  importance  with  M.  Maeterlinck. 
They  are  the  very  things  he  pronounces  to  be 
useless.    If  we  neglect  these  matters,  what  is  left? 

Into  a  dark,  and  old,  and  melancholy  world,  a 
world  not  utterly  without  gleams  of  sunshine  and 
a  flower  or  two,  but  still  constrained  to  its  gloom 
by  its  own  people,  and  by  the  people  of  ages 
long  past,  into  such  a  world  comes  a  spirit  of 
beauty  from  a  faraway  and  unknown  place.    Here 


MAETERLINCK  163 

in  this  gloomy  world  are  such  people  as  we  know : 
a  powerful,  active  man,  a  child,  an  old  man  whose 
wisdom  has  taught  him  only  that  the  riddle  of  the 
universe  is  unsolvable,  and  a  young  man.  What- 
ever the  relations  of  these  people  may  have  been, 
they  are  disturbed  by  the  newcomer ;  the  new  charm 
and  beauty  bring  delight  but  also  discord.  It  is 
the  young  man  that  especially  understands  this 
new  companion;  the  feeling  of  others  is  but  ex-^ 
ternal  and  superficial,  his  understanding  is  vital. 
But  conditions  are  such  that  they  cannot  be  ta 
each  other  what  they  might,  and  both  perish ;  leav- 
ing the  world  much  as  it  was  before,  save  that  there 
is  a  remembrance  left  of  the  exquisite  and  beauti- 
ful one,  who  will  some  day  take  the  place  now  made 
vacant. 

It  is  not  very  difiicult  to  see  what  there  is  in  that^ 
• — all  that  need  be  said  is  that  M.  Maeterlinck  does 
not  deem  it  necessary  to  make  it  very  obvious.  He 
is  content  to  give  us  his  drama — there  must  be 
some  action,  charajsters,  dialogue — and  to  suggest 
to  us  continually  matters  of  wisdom  and  destiny 
that  cannot  be  put  in  straightforward  words  with- 
out losing  some  of  their  truth;  to  present  to  us 
the  possibility  of  a  life  of  the  spirit  which  shall  be 
fuller  and  more  beautiful  than  the  life  to  which 
we  are  accustomed.  Is  it  then  beautiful  to  love 
your  brother's  wife?  we  may  ask.    M.  Maeterlinck 


164  MAETERLINCK 

presumably  believes  that  to  love  any  one  is^beau* 
ti|ul.  He  presents  spiritual  things  by  common 
means ;  he  wants  to  convey  the  idea  of  a  love  which 
overrides  the  barriers  ©I  the  intercourse  to  which 
we  are  accustomed.  The  barrier  of  marriage  seems 
to  be  the  one  which  commonly  occurs  to  him,  but  in 
itself  that  is  but  an  accident,  resulting  perhaps 
from  lack  of  imagination,  perhaps  from  other 
causes.  He  wants  to  present  to  us  an  intercourse 
of  the  spirit  and  by  the  very  nature  of  the  case 
he  must  depict  it  in  some  physical  form;  in  just 
what  form  is  not  important. 

But  let  us  not  rush  upon  the  notion  that  we 
must  seize  the  mystical  meaning,  bear  it  forth  and 
feast  upon  it  alone.  The  symbolism  has  its  story 
which  is  necessary  to  it.  Why  does  the  soul  have 
a  body.'*  We  may  not  be  sure,  but  we  know  that 
since  it  has,  we  must  admit  it  to  considerations  M. 
Maeterlinck's  play  is  a  play  even  without  regard 
to  any  symbolism  at  all.  "  As  it  was  presented 
yesterday,"  wrote  somebody  when  Mrs.  Patrick 
Campbell  gave  it  in  London,  "  at  the  Royalty 
Theatre,  you  felt  the  poetry  of  idea,  the  delicacy 
of  suggestion,  the  rarity  and  remoteness  of  it  all. 
What  does  it  all  mean.^^  Anything  beyond  what 
lies  upon  the  surface.?  Perhaps,  but  at  a  first 
hearing,  at  any  rate,  you  are  content  to  enjoy  the 
b%auty,  the  romance  of  Maeterlinck's   creation." 


MAETERLINCK  165 

We  may  enjoy  the  externals  thoroughly,  even 
though  the  essential  continually  haunts  us  with  a 
vague  sense  of  heightened  significance. 

M.  Maeterlinck's  following  plays  may  be  readily 
appreciated  after  "  Pelleas  et  Melisande  " ;  we  have 
the  same  externality  and  the  same  suggestion  of 
spiritual  life  and  conversation.  In  "  Alladine  et 
Palamides  "  we  have  the  same  contrast  between 
gloomy  castle  and  bright  world,  the  same  conflict 
of  lovers  with  the  rigidity  of  common  life.  The 
story  is  not  precisely  the  same  as  in  "  Pelleas  et 
Melisande,"  but  there  is  quite  as  much  love,  jeal- 
ousy, and  death.  These  we  need  not  wish  away, 
as  Keats  says,  but  we  should  take  them  for  what 
they  are  worth,  and  fix  our  desire  upon  the  spiri- 
tual content,  the  super-expressive  element  to  which 
we  shall  respond  only  by  calming  ourselves  of 
outward  thrills  and  emotions.  "  Aglavaine  et 
Selysette  "  is  not  very  different  at  bottom,  though 
the  mise  en  scene  is  not  quite  the  same. 

In  "  La  Mort  de  Tintagiles,"  however,  we  have 
something  rather  different  in  form  and  in  motive. 
It  is  a  very  simple  and  affecting  little  play,  al- 
though less  theoretically  consistent  with  M.  Mae- 
terlinck's dramaturgy  than  others.  The  child  in 
the  grip  of  the  dark  and  powerful  queen,  the 
devoted  sisters,  their  watch  and  their  failure, 
Ygraine's     desperation     and     revolt, — these    are 


166  MAETERLINCK 

almost  too  typical,  too  symbolic.  To  present  a 
symbol  is  nothing  new,  even  when  done  with  con- 
summate sensitiveness  and  mastery  of  feeling;  it 
is  a  language  not  unlike  the  metaphors  of  every 
day.  What  M.  Maeterlinck  seemed  to  be  feeling 
for  was  the  suggestion  of  much  by  means  of  little 
or  even  nothing.  And  in  spite  of  the  beauty  of 
this  little  piece,  I  cannot  feel  in  it  the  elusiveness 
that  I  have  thought  it  M.  Maeterlinck's  design  to 
convey.  Of  the  other  plays  "  Interieur  "  is  not 
unlike  "  L'Intrus  "  in  its  general  character,  and 
**  Soeur  Beatrice  "  is  rather  after  the  fashion  of 
some  other  things.  I  will  confess  honestly  that  I 
have  quite  failed,  however,  to  get  at  it,  except  so 
far  as  the  obvious  exoteric  proceedings  are  con- 
cerned. But  I  believe  we  need  not  pause  on  these 
plays,  for  there  are  others  more  important. 

"  Ariane  et  Barbe  Bleue  "  is  a  significant  little 
piece  because  it  is  a  sort  of  commentary.  There 
are  castles  and  caverns  as  in  the  other  plays,  but 
at  the  moment  that  M.  Maeterlinck  diverges  from 
the  nursery  tale  we  see  at  a  flash  much.  When 
Ariane  looks  at  the  keys  which  Bluebeard  has 
given  her,  and  at  once  selects  the  forbidden  key, 
with  the  calm  "  That  is  the  only  one  of  value,'* 
one  can  see  at  once,  not  allegory,  not  symbolism, 
but  that  M.  Maeterlinck  throughout  is  assured 
that  in  prospecting  for  truth  it  is  useless  to  go 


MAETERLINCK  167 

where  people  have  gone  before  and  found  nothing. 
He  searches  in  those  very  places  which  are  for- 
bidden by  convention,  or  authority,  or  fear  of  ridi- 
cule, or  hope  of  praise,  just  because  the  things 
which  were  allowed  to  all  have  been  explored  by  all, 
to  no  great  effect  so  far  as  his  own  interests  were 
concerned.  That  which  is  permitted  is  of  no  value ; 
it  will  only  distract  one's  attention.  If  one  regards 
the  prohibitions  of  the  world,  one  will  go  no  fur- 
ther than  the  world.  So  Ariane  at  once  makes 
for  the  forbidden  door.  Her  nurse  opens  various 
other  doors  that  are  not  forbidden  and  finds  heaps 
of  diamonds,  pearls,  rubies,  and  other  trivial 
things.  But  Ariane  opens  the  forbidden  door 
and  finds — all  M.  Maeterlinck's  heroines.  She 
finds  them  in  a  dark  cavern  which  she  makes  light 
by  letting  in  the  sun.  They  are  dazzled  at  first. 
When  they  can  see,  they  long  to  go  to  the  woods, 
the  fields,  the  ocean.  They  look  upon  each  other, 
and  when  they  see  each  other  as  they  are  they 
think  it  very  strange.  Still,  when  they  gather  in 
the  hall  of  the  jewels  and  Bluebeard  is  delivered  to 
them,  they  cannot  make  up  their  minds  to  break 
their  bonds.  They  care  for  him  till  he  returns 
to  consciousness.  Then  Ariane  says  that  she 
must  go  away.  Nor  will  she  ever  come  back.  One 
after  another:  Melisande,  Selysette,  Ygraine,  Bel- 
langere,  AUadine  refuse  to  accompany  her,  and 


168  MAETERLINCK 

she  goes  forth  alone,  leaving  them  In  the  hall  of 
jewels. 

Somehow  one  cannot  take  all  that  seriously,  but 
in  spite  of  the  humour  that  cannot  be  denied  (in- 
deed it  should  surely  be  appreciated)  there  is  some- 
thing well  worth  having.  Ex^  oris  infantium; 
children  have  not  the  wisdom  of  us  elder  folks,  of 
course.  But  we  do  not  deny  the  frequent  value  of 
their  clearsightedness.  I  confess  that  M.  Maeter- 
linck's long-haired  ladies  had  appeared  to  me  not 
wholly  in  keeping  with  the  Treasure  of  the  Hum- 
ble, Wisdom  and  Destiny,  the  Buried  Temple. 
When  I  read  "  Ariane  et  Barbe  Bleue  "  I  began 
to  see  a  glimmering  of  light  on  the  dark  river. 

When  you  begin  on  "  Monna  Vanna  "  you  are 
all  at  sea  again.  Here  is  no  symbolism,  certainly, 
whatever  there  be  elsewhere,  and  no  realism  either. 
"  Monna  Vanna  ''  is  not  conceived  for  the  static 
theatre,  nor  for  the  romantic  theatre  that  we  have 
become  accustomed  to.  It  is  a  play  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance,  and  in  externals  might  be  by  anybody. 
If  it  were  by  anybody  else,  one  could  read  it  easily 
enough ;  but  being  by  M.  Maeterlinck,  we  feel  that 
there  must  be  more  than  meets  the  eye. 

The  first  accustomed  figure  in  a  world  of  ordi- 
nary strangers  is  the  old  man  Marco.  He  has  the 
air  of  calm  wisdom  with  which  we  are  familiar 
from  M.  Maeterlinck's  philosophical  writings;  he 


MAETERLINCK  169 

is  representative  of  eternal  justice;  if  not  of  com- 
mon sense,  yet  of  that  sense  wherein  we  "'  see  into 
the  hfe  of  things  "  and  which  greets  us  so  often  if 
not  in  M.  Maeterlinck's  plays,  at  least  in  his  phi- 
losophy. We  recognise  it  and  respond  to  it.  In 
this  play,  however,  his  wisdom  is  not  generally 
recognised;  it  is  indeed  intensely  irritating  to 
others  on  the  stage.  Marco  brings  to  the  captain 
of  beleaguered  Pisa  the  offer  of  the  Florentine  be- 
sieger ;  let  his  wife,  Monna  Vanna,  go  to  the  tent 
of  the  conqueror  in  mantle  and  sandals  only,  and 
the  town  shall  be  spared.  Guido  is  outraged; 
Marco  imperturbable.  "  Why  do  you  consider  if 
you  have  the  right  to  deliver  a  whole  people  to 
death  in  order  to  delay  for  a  few  hours  an  evil 
which  is  inevitable;  for  when  the  city  is  taken 
Vanna  will  fall  into  the  power  of  the  conqueror." 
The  Maeterlinckian  wisdom  is  not  understood, 
save  by  Vanna  herself,  who  immediately  accepts 
the  offer.  Guido  is  indignant  and  outraged  and 
we  certainly  must  sympathise  with  him,  but  how 
much  less  wise  he  is  than  the  other. 

WTien  Monna  Vanna  comes  to  the  tent  of  Prin- 
zivalle^she  learns  that  they  have  met  before;  he 
met  her  as  a  child  and  has  loved  her  for  twenty 
years  during  all  the  rush  and  change  of  a  captain 
of  condottieri.  There  is  something  noble  in  such 
devotion  and  Vanna  receives  it  at  its  true  worth. 


170  MAETERLINCK 

It  is  something  diflFerent  from  everyday  sentiment 
and  feelings.     They  return  together  to  Pisa. 

When  they  get  there  it  is  not  remarkable  that 
Guido  does  not  appreciate  this  noble  love  as  his 
wife  has  done.  Guido  is  of  the  world  and  cannot 
understand  that  people  will  not  do  as  seems  most 
natural  to  him.  Marco  alone  appreciates ;  for  the 
rest  no  effort  can  make  a  really  fine  piece  of  Quix- 
otic idealism  seem  for  a  moment  possible.  Those 
who  want  to  live  at  a  higher  level  must  be  satisfied 
with  very  few  companions. 

j  [  But  I  believe  M.  Maeterlinck  succeeds  in  put- 
ting us  on  his  side.  Real  justice  appears  beautiful 
in  Marco ;  real  morality  in  Vanna ;  real  love  in 
IPrinzivalle.  Such  people  will  understand  each 
lother  even  if  everybody  else  holds  them  worse  than 
{fools  or  knaves. 

The  best  commentator  on  M.  Maeterlinck,  or 
at  least  the  keenest,  is  M.  Maeterlinck  himself. 
"  Joyzelle  "  is  full  of  explanation.  For  the  mo- 
ment we  may  neglect  its  dramatic  character  and 
take  it  for  criticism.  Merlin  has  gained  power 
because  he  has  found  Arielle,  he  has  "  realised  his 
interior  force,  the  forgotten  power  that  slumbers 
in  every  soul."  This  is  the  main  thing;  it  is  not 
the  common,  everyday  intellect,  will,  emotion  that 
will  give  us  an  apprehension  of  a  reality  that 
stands  all  tests;  It  is  something  that  we  are  coil- 


MAETERLINCK  171 

scious  of  in  silence  as  in  "  The  Treasure  of  the 
Humble,"  in  ecstasy  as  in  "  Pelleas  et  Melisande," 
in  wisdom  and  justice  as  in  "  Monna  Vanna."  To 
those  who  do  not  know,  Merlin  is  a  bad  magician, 
just  as  Marco  is  a  heartless  philosopher;  but  he 
has  only  "  done  a  little  sooner  what  they  will  do 
later,"  for  the  age  is  on  the  dawn  of  a  spiritual 
enlightenment.  The  world  waits  for  clear  day; 
a  few  young  men  now  dream  dreams,  a  few  old  men 
see  visions,  but  the  time  is  approaching  when  the 
clouds  shall  lift  that  now  hang  within  a  little  of 
the  horizon.  In  the  play  Merlin  waits  for  his  son 
who  is  to  attain  by  love;  who  will  achieve  more 
than  his  father  just  because  he  is  to  win  by  love 
what  the  other  has  gained  by  knowledge.  Joy- 
zelle  is  love,  unalloyed,  incorruptible,  perfect. 
She  denies  everything  that  contradicts  her  intui- 
tion; like  Ariane  she  perceives  that  the  very  for- 
bidding of  anything  renders  it  necessary ;  like 
Monna  Vanna  she  scruples  at  no  trial.  Unlike 
most  people  she  cannot  be  influenced  by  some- 
thing that  has  no  relation  to  her. 

This  is  the  enforcement   of  M.   Maeterlinck's^  L.j, 
fundamental  idea;  the  laws  of  life  are  not  to  be 
deduced  from  the  apparent  circumstances  of  life; 
they  are  to  be  appreciated  by  intuition;  they  are 
therefore  best  known,  not  by  words,  by  deeds,  by     ', 
that  which  can  be  seen  and  heard,  but  in  silence, 


172  MAETERLINCK 

not  actively  but  passively.  Such  communication 
with  the  absolute  gives  one  a  certain  kind  of  dis- 
position of  which  the  motive  power  is  love  and  the 
directing  power  wisdom,  but  of  these  the  latter  is 
the  servant  of  the  former. 

Such  is  an  abstract  statement  of  the  ideas  which 
are  at  the  bottom  of  M.  Maeterlinck's  work. 
They  are  fundamental  conceptions,  however,  and 
on  them  is  based  a  dramatic  art  which  does  not 
seem  to  have  varied  very  much  from  the  original 
statement.  In  "  The  Double  Garden  "  he  gives 
us  a  more  recent  view  in  commenting  on  the  drama 
of  the  present.  The  action  is  still  unimportant. 
He  does  not  still  insist  on  the  principle  that  there 
should  be  no  external  action,  but  the  particular 
acts  are  not  of  importance.  Pelleas  may  love  his 
brother's  wife,  Monna  Vanna  may  go  to  the  tent 
of  a  victorious  mercenary,  Joyzelle  may  emulate 
Judith, — certainly  all  the  events  have  the  same 
character,  perhaps  but  a  Gallic  accident, — ^but 
in  themselves  the  acts  are  entirely  indifferent  and 
might  be  something  else.  The  dialogue  is  still 
simple.  It  does  not  continue  the  effort  at  realism 
which  people  used  to  think  so  funny,  but  it  still 
aims  to  suggest  rather  than  to  state.  It  carries 
on  the  action,  but  its  true  purpose  is  to  dissemi- 
nate communication  of  a  super-essential  character. 
}  In  fact  the  whole  aim  is  to  attune  the  modern  mind 


MAETERLINCK  173 

to  an  appreciation  of  the  mystical,  to  get  it  to  be 
direct  and  to  disregard  circumstance. 

A  good  deal  in  M.  Maeterlinck's  dramas  has 
been  held  to  be  symbolic.  I  cannot  attach  much 
importance  to  the  opinion.  A  symbol  is  not  an 
effective  mode  of  expression.  Unless  a  symbol  in 
long  process  of  time,  or  otherwise,  has  attached 
itself  to  our  emotional  life  it  is  rarely  of  much  im- 
portance. The  hearth,  the  flag,  the  cross,  these 
doubtless  are  symbols,  and  of  immense  power,  and 
further  they  are  symbols  having  what  is  practi- 
cally accidental  connection  with  the  thing  they 
symbolise.  Hearths  are  sadly  uncommon  nowa- 
days, flags  present  either  a  fancy  or  a  convention 
of  a  forgotten  heraldry,  and  the  cross  is  an  im- 
mense power  even  when  its  historic  character  is 
forgotten.  These  symbols  have  power  over  us, 
it  is  true,  but  chiefly  because  their  extraordinary 
and  universal  acceptance  has  associated  them  in- 
extricably with  our  moral  nature.  The  symbols 
of  men  of  letters  rarely  have  this  power  unless 
there  be  some  real  likeness  at  bottom,  as  in  the 
conception  of  a  progress  from  this  world  to  the 
world  to  come.  Where  there  is  no  such  reality 
the  symbol  is  fanciful  and  has  little  lasting  power. 
The  symbols  of  Hawthorne,  the  scarlet  letter, 
Zenobia's  flower,  have  meaning  only  by  the  moral 
vitality  which  they  express. 


174  MAETERLINCK 

A  symbol,  If  it  be  nothing  but  a  symbol,  merely 
serves  to  mystify,  to  obscure.  Arthur  Rimbaud's 
idea  that  A  symbolised  blue  (or  whatever  colour 
it  was)  and  the  other  vowels,  other  colours,  would 
obscure  matters  if  any  one  paid  any  attention  to 
it,  because,  although  people  do  attach  conceptions 
of  colour  to  sounds  or  letters,  they  differ  very 
greatly  about  it,  so  that  symbolism  of  that  sort 
is  not  expressive,  but  obscuring.  M.  Maeterlinck 
has  no  desire  to  be  obscure:  in  his  essays  he  tries 
to  state  very  simply  and  directly  his  ideas  on  a 
very  inexpressible  matter.  I  remember  no  sym- 
bols properly  so  called  in  his  philosophical  writ- 
ings, though  there  are  figures  for  the  moment  here 
and  there. 

The  figures  and  circumstances  in  his  plays,  with 
a  few  exceptions,  are  not  symbolic;  they  are  ex- 
amples, types,  concrete  cases,  which  are  things 
very  different  from  symbols.  They  have  reality, 
they  have  a  real  marvellousness,  to  use  his  quota- 
tion from  Reaumer,  instead  of  a  marvellousness 
that  is  changeful  and  imaginary.  M.  Maeter- 
linck himself  says  that  he  has  long  ceased  to  find 
in  this  world  any  marvel  more  interesting  or  more 
beautiful  than  truth,  or  at  least  than  man's  effort 
to  know  It.  And  so  in  his  book  "  Les  Abeilles," 
although  there  is  the  constant  idea  in  mind  that 
in  the  hive  we  have  a  form  of  life  that  may  give 


MAETERLINCK  >      176 

us  some  knowledge  of  human  life,  there  is  nowhere 
any  fancy  as  we  may  call  it,  but  wherever  an 
analogy  is  perceived  it  is  presented  very  simply 
and  with  abundant  explanation  and  limitation. 
"  Let  us  not  hasten  to  draw  from  these  facts  con- 
clusions as  to  the  life  of  man."  Yet  there  is 
throughout  that  singularly  interesting  book  the 
constant  feeling  of  an  analogy  that  is  rarely  ex- 
pressed. The  bees  act  under  the  impulsion  of  a 
power  external  to  themselves,  it  would  seem,  to 
which  we  cannot  give  a  better  name  than  the  spirit 
of  the  hive.  They  are  aware  of  this  spirit  and 
they  obey  it:  but  it  does  not  appear  that  they 
know  it  intellectually  or  obey  it  consciously.  M. 
Maeterlinck's  representative  figures  are  like  the 
bees,  they  are  unconsciously  under  the  domination 
of  the  spirit  of  the  race,  of  the  de*stiny  of  human- 
ity, of  the  wisdom  of  life.  The  feeling  leads  them 
to  strange  acts,  it  is  true,  but  it  does  lead  them. 
Maeterlinck  presents  them  to  us  and  that  in  a 
form  in  which  we  may  sympathise  with  them. 
That  is  his  work  as  a  dramatist.  It  is  not  his 
business  to  preach  either  by  symbol  or  sermon. 
He  is  content  to  present  the  essential  things  of 
life  as  he  recognises  them.  He  presents  them  in 
forms  in  which,  as  nearly  as  may  be,  those  things 
which  cannot  be  spoken  can  be  made  evident. 


OUR    IDEA    OF   TRAGEDY 

Some  years  ago  Mr.  Courtnej;  delivered  three 
lectures  at  the  Royal  Institution  which  he  pub- 
Kshed  under  the  title;,  "  The  Idea  of  Tragedy." 
So  far  as  offering  any  explanation  of  the  power 
of  tragedy  In  this  world,  he  was  not  very  success- 
ful. The  essence  of  tragedy,  thought  Mr.  Court- 
ney, lay  in  the  conflict  presented.  But  every  one 
knows  that  conflict  In  Itself  Is  not  tragic :  as  com- 
monly thought  of,  conflict  may  be  tragic  and  may 
not.  Mr.  Courtney  spoke  of  the  Attic  tragedy 
as  presenting  the  conflict  of  the  human  will  against 
fate,  of  Shakespearean  tragedy  as  presenting  the 
conflict  of  the  human  will  with  the  laws  that  guide 
the  universe.  When  he  got  to  modern  times,  how- 
ever, his  courage  failed  him :  "  The  Second  Mrs. 
Tanqueray  "  was  his  ideal,  and  he  saw  very  clearly 
that  there  was  no  conflict  there  to  make  tragedy. 
So  he  abandoned  his  idea  and  took  a  new  one :  in- 
spired by  Ibsen,  he  added  that  in  modern  tragedy 
the  main  idea  is  failure  to  achieve  one's  mission. 

The  first  of  these  ideas  was  by  no  means  new. 
It  will  be  found  in  many  places  in  aesthetic  litera- 

176 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  17T 

ture.  Let  me  quote  a  statement  of  It  not  so  com- 
mon as  some  others :  it  has  in  it  some  very  interest- 
ing criticism  of  poetry: 

"  Say  what  meant  the  woes 
By  Tantalus  entailed  upon  his  race, 
And  the  dark  sorrows  of  the  line  of  Thebes? 
Fictions  in  form,  but  in  their  substance  truth. 
Tremendous  truths !  familiar  to  the  men 
Of  long-past  times,  nor  obsolete  in  ours. 
Exchange  the  shepherd's  frock  of  native  grey 
For  robes  with  regal  purple  fringed ;  convert 
The  crook  into  a  sceptre ;  give  the  pomp 
Of  circumstance,  and  here  the  tragic  Muse 
Shall  find  apt  subjects  for  her  highest  art. 
Amid  the  groves,  under  the  shadowy  hills, 
The  generations  are  prepared;  the  pangs, 
The  internal  pangs  are  ready;  the  dread  strife 
Of  poor  humanity's  afflicted  will 
Struggling  in  vain  with  ruthless  destiny." 

In  that  passage  Wordsworth  expresses  his  idea 
in  almost  exactly  the  words  of  Mr.  Courtney,  and 
says,  too,  that  this  conflict  between  will  and  fate^ 
the  subject  of  Greek  tragedy,  is  still  a  power  ready 
to  the  hand  of  the  poet  of  the  day. 

The  other  notion  of  tragedy,  too,  may  be  found 
in   the  poetry  of   our   day,   notably   in   that   of 


178  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

Browning,  whose  tragedy,  when  he  presents  us 
with  tragedy,  generally  consists,  not  so  much  in 
strife,  as  in  failure  to  do  that  which  was  possible, 
that  which  one's  best  nature  demanded.  It  is  of 
this  form  of  tragedy  he  writes  in  the  "  Lost 
Leader,"  where  Wordsworth  served  him  as  ex- 
ample as  he  has  served  me  with  precept. 

But  all  this  seems  to  me  a  little  superlBcial. 
Granted  that  tragedy  consists  sometimes  of  a  con- 
flict, a  strife,  whether  between  the  human  will  and 
fate,  or  between  humanity  and  natural  law ;  some- 
times of  a  failure  to  fulfil  one's  mission,  to  be  what 
one  might  be,  to  "  live  one's  own  life,"  according 
to  the  phrase  of  the  day  or  the  day  before  yester- 
day,— it  is  still  a  question  why  these  matters 
should  affect  us  as  tragedy  does  affect  us.  That 
is  my  interest:  literature  or  art,  tragedy  or  any 
other  element  in  it  is  vitally  important  to  us,  only 
as  it  affects,  touches,  moves  us.  And  any  theory 
of  tragedy,  to  take  any  real  part  in  our  thinking 
and  feeling,  must  make  clearer  to  us  why  we  are 
moved,  or  how,  in  order  that  we  may  appreciate, 
in  the  tragedies  that  we  see,  the  things  that  are 
really  strong  and  true. 

It  may  first,  however,  be  a  matter  of  interest 
to  some  unsophisticated  souls  who  have  no  theory 
on  the  subject,  and  have  often  enjoyed  tragedies 
keenly  without  any,  to  know  why  we  should  wish 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  179 

to  discuss  the  idea  of  tragedy  in  the  drama  of  our 
day.  Why  the  idea  of  tragedy  rather  than  the 
idea  of  farce  or  of  comedy  or  any  other  idea? 
Or  even  why  talk  of  such  abstractions  at  all? 

Let  me  explain  why  nobody  should  be  without  a 
theory  of  tragedy.  I  may  add  that  I  have  already 
presented  the  matter  to  the  public,  to  the  accept- 
ance, unfortunately,  of  no  one  that  I  ever  heard 
of,  and  to  the  utter  rejection  of  one  competent 
authority  on  the  drama.  If  I  do  not  endeavour 
to  controvert  the  opinions  of  this  latter  learned 
critic,  it  is  not  because  I  do  not  respect  them.  It 
is  because  the  spectacle  of  two  academic  theorists 
disputing  on  the  matter  of  tragedy — two  budge 
doctors  of  the  Stoic  fur  disputing  over  the  fit  of 
a  buskin — would  be  inharmoniously  humorous. 
So  I  must  bid  her  farewell  (ave  atque  vale!),  my 
fair  theorist  with  her  "  tragic  blame "  and  so 
forth.  I  shall  never  convert  her — perhaps  no  one 
else — ^but  I  shall  enjoy  tragedy  all  the  same  in  my 
own  way,  more,  I  hope,  than  it  is  possible  to  do  in 
hers. 

We  may  well  enough  discuss  the  idea  of  tragedy 
in  the  drama  of  our  day,  or  of  any  other,  because 
by  the  pretty  general  consent  of  mankind,  or  that 
part  of  it  that  cares  for  letters,  tragedy  is  re- 
garded as  the  highest  and  noblest  Uterary  form. 
A  great  tragedy  stands  higher  in  the  estimation 


180  OUR  roEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

of  the  world  than  a  great  lyric  or  a  great  novel. 
Aristotle  considered  tragedy  the  crowning  achieve- 
ment of  the  human  intellect,  though  the  Greeks 
in  general  gave  the  first  place  to  Homer.  The 
English  world  considers  Shakespeare  the  greatest 
author  of  all  times,  though  Keats  thought  that  the 
epic  was  the  truly  great  form  and  Poe  the  lyric. 
These  are  differences  of  opinion  and  the  question 
is  not  very  important :  some  of  the  world's  master- 
pieces are  tragedies  and  some  are  not.  In  the 
drama,  however,  tragedy  easily  holds  the  most  im- 
portant place.  We  like  to  laugh  at  a  farce,  to  be 
thrilled  at  a  melodrama,  to  be  charmed  at  a 
comedy, — and  we  may  not  like  a  tragedy  as  much 
as  these  things.  But  generally  people  admit  that 
it  is  greater.  It  may  be  too  great  for  us  at  some 
given  time, — there  will  be  plenty  of  evenings  when 
we  had  rather  go  to  some  bright  comedy  or  some 
exciting  melodrama,  or  even  to  the  vaudeville  or 
the  music  hall,  if  it  comes  to  that,  as  it  often  does, 
— than  to  any  tragedy  ever  written.  But  that  is 
just  as  we  do  not  always  want  to  read  the  very 
best  literature,  do  not  always  want  to  be  hearing 
classic  music,  do  not  always  want  to  be  looking 
at  the  Sistine  Madonna,  say ;  do  not  always  want 
to  wear  our  best  clothes  and  sit  in  the  parlour. 
We  acknowledge  pretty  generally  that  tragedy  is 
the  great  thing,  though  we  may  not  be  always  in 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  181 

the  mood  for  it.  Few  persons  of  taste  can  experi- 
ence profoundly  the  emotion  of  a  great  tragedy 
and  hold  that  any  other  dramatic  form  is  equally 
great. 

This  theoretic  view  we  might  present  on  the 
basis  of  current  facts.  That  is,  practically  all 
the  great  plays  of  which  we  have  been  speaking  are 
tragedies.  We  may  not  feel  quite  sure  just  what 
is  conveyed  by  the  term  tragedy,  but  we  can  gen- 
erally tell  one  when  we  see  it,  if  only  by  the  simple 
fact  that  the  chief  figure  dies  at  the  end,  or  at 
least  comes  to  an  end  in  the  particular  world  in 
which  we  know  him,  which  is  much  the  same  thing. 
There  is  nothing  essentially  noble  in  death,  I  sup- 
pose, nor  is  death  on  the  stage  always  tragic,  but 
we  do  have  this  particular  ending  in  "  Cyrano  " 
and  "  L'Aiglon,"  in  "  Die  versunkene  Glocke  '* 
and  "  Es  lebe  das  Leben,"  in  "  The  Second  Mrs. 
Tanqueray,"  in  "  Pelleas  et  Melisande,"  though 
not  in  "  Candida,'*  presumably. 

And  if  the  greatest  of  our  modern  plays  have 
the  same  purpose  as  the  greatest  plays  of  the  old 
Athenian  days,  of  the  great  Elizabethan  time,  of 
the  French  classic  period ;  why,  it  is  worth  our  while 
to  spend  a  time  in  studying  out  their  essential 
characteristic,  if  it  be  only  that  we  may  be  sure 
to  gain  from  these  plays  the  highest  form  of 
pleasure,  that  we  do  not  get  too  much  interested 


182  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

in  minor  matters,  but  find  out  in  them  what  is 
best. 

For  it  is  well  to  remark  that  there  is  no  especial 
importance  in  the  abstract  definition  of  the  term. 
"  tragedy  "  or  of  any  other  term  in  aesthetics. 
That  is  in  itself  a  matter  of  slight  moment  for  us. 
There  is,  it  is  true,  intense  pleasure  in  speculating 
on  aesthetic  subjects  for  those  who  like  it  (as  I  do), 
just  as  there  is  intense  pleasure  in  speculating  over 
any  other  point  in  psychology,  or  any  other 
science.  But  that  is  something  for  the  lover  of 
speculation,  not  for  the  lover  of  literature :  it  has, 
as  such,  no  more  to  do  with  the  appreciation  of 
the  drama  than  any  other  kind  of  speculation. 
Many  people  have  an  intuitive  delight  at  fine 
things  on  the  stage,  which  is  far  more  intense  than 
the  reasoned  pleasure  of  a  cut-and-dried  critic. 
It  is  not  for  the  importance  of  the  definition  that 
it  is  worth  while  to  go  over  the  subject. 

No,  it  is  for  a  more  practical  reason.  It  is 
that  we  may  have  a  notion  of  the  true  sources  of 
pleasure,  or,  rather,  of  the  sources  of  the  truest 
pleasure.  A  dozen  people  will  go  to  the  same  play 
and  enjoy  a  dozen  different  things.  One  had  eyes 
for  the  costumes,  another  for  the  stage-settings, 
another  was  carried  away  by  the  sweet  smile  of  the 
actress,  another  got  "a  great  moral  lesson''  (I 
suppose  there  must  be  such  people,  or  the  matter 


OUR  roEA  OF  TRAGEDY  183 

would  not  figure  in  the  advertisements),  another 
was  delighted  at  the  careful  dramatic  construe- 
tion,  another  enjoyed  the  fine  delivery  of  the  poet^s 
lines  (that  couldn't  have  been  in  America,  unless 
perhaps  it  was  the  Chorus  in  "Henry  V."),  an- 
other was  immensely  impressed  somehow  in  a  way 
he  could  not  explain.  If  we  are  one  of  these  and 
talk  to  some  of  the  others,  and  find  that  we  have 
really  missed  something  worth  while, — or,  to  put 
it  more  simply,  if  we  find,  on  reading  a  criticism 
the  next  morning,  that  there  was  more  than  met 
our  eye, — why,  then  we  may  feel  as  though 
we  had  not  got  from  the  play  all  that  was  there. 
And  if  we  go  again  we  shall  perhaps  aim  to  get 
the  true  thrill,  and  look  out  especially  for  it. 
Our  friend  who  said  of  "  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  " 
that  "  The  most  popular  play  of  the  final  decade 
of  the  century  presents  no  problem  whatever,  and 
avoids  any  criticism  of  life,"  was  one  who  looked 
in  "  Cyrano  "  for  problems  and  criticism  of  life, 
because  he  thought  that  a  great  play  ought  to 
have  those  things.  A  problem,  in  the  sense  in 
which  people  say  that  Pinero  deals  with  problems, 
"  Cyrano  "  has  not,  and  a  good  thing,  too.  And 
as  for  a  criticism  of  life,  it  certainly  does  not  have 
that  in  potted  form.  Those  things  it  does  not 
have ;  what  it  does  have  is  better  worth  while  than 
either.     But  the  point  is  that  such  a  critic  does? 


184  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

not  get  from  "  Cyrano  "  even  that  which  it  has, 
because  he  looks  for  something  it  had  not,  which, 
to  his  mind,  was  the  real  thing. 

Now  with  tragedy  it  is  commonly  supposed  that 
there  is  something  especial  about  it  which  influ- 
ences all  men ;  that  human  nature  is  such  as  to  be 
susceptible  to  this  something,  which  appears  in  all 
sorts  of  forms,  always  different,  but  always  hav- 
ing upon  the  souls  of  men  the  same  moving  effect. 
Just  what  this  something  is,  the  critics  have  found 
it  hard  to  say.  Just  what  is  the  moving  effect 
that  it  has,  has  been  occasion  of  various  explana- 
tion. But  it  is  the  pretty  general  opinion  that  in 
all  tragedy  there  is  a  single  something,  and  that 
people  are  and  have  been  affected  by  it  in  much 
the  same  way.  It  is  not  necessary  that  this 
should  be  the  case.  The  Athenians  were  very  dif- 
ferent from  us.  It  might  be  that  there  were 
things  about  their  tragedies  that  have  no  especial 
effect  upon  us,  and  that  we  enjoy  things  to  which 
they  paid  small  attention.  With  the  Elizabethan 
drama  there  is  no  doubt  of  the  matter;  Shake- 
speare's audiences  cared  greatly  for  things  which 
are  even  distasteful  to  us,  and  we  enjoy  things 
which  they  hardly  noticed.  But  these  things  are 
minor  matters ;  the  real  tragedy  is  the  same  to-day 
that  it  was  in  Shakespeare's  day,  that  it  was  in 
the  time  of  the  Greeks.      If,  then,  we  see  some 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  185 

great  and  common  quality  in  all  great  tragedy, 
if  we  see  some  great  and  common  quality  in  human 
nature  now  and  two  thousand  years  ago,  and  if 
the  common  quality  of  great  tragedy  seems  to 
bear  some  relation  to  the  quality  of  human  nature, 
far  more  if  it  seem  to  be  a  natural  cause  of  it, — 
why,  then  we  may  well  believe  that  the  success  of 
a  great  tragedy,  the  existence  in  it  of  a  lasting 
appeal  to  mankind,  comes  not  from  accident  nor 
from  art,  but  from  the  presence  of  the  truly 
tragic  quality  which  moved  the  Athenians  in  the 
days  when  ^Eschylus  presented  "  Prometheus 
Bound,"  which  was  felt  when  "  Hamlet "  was  jnst 
put  on  the  stage,  just  as  it  is  felt  to-day  in  not 
a  few  pieces  which  for  minor  reasons  we  cannot 
compare  with  those  masterpieces  of  the  human 
mind. 

To  talk  over  this  question  is  to  attune  ourselves 
to  it.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  definition  which  one 
may  read  in  a  book  and  learn  by  heart.  It  is  a 
matter  of  looking  into  one  thing  or  another  and 
trying  to  feel  keenly  what  is  there.  It  is  doubt- 
less the  case  that  some  people  feel  artistic  beauty 
keenly  with  no  sense  of  why  or  wherefore,  and  it 
is  probably  the  case  also  that  other  people  feel 
artistic  beauty,  just  as  keenly  but  in  a  somewhat 
different  way,  with  more  consciousness  of  causes 
and  reasons.     Both  kinds  of  enjoyment  are  good 


186  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

if  both  be  intense  and  genuine.  A  person  who 
enjoys  keenly,  with  no  idea  of  why,  has  usually 
more  artistic  appreciation  than  the  person  who 
thinks  much  or  reasons.  But  both  may  enjoy 
more  keenly  by  training,  or,  in  this  case,  by  talk- 
ing or  thinking  over  the  matters  in  question  and 
discussing  the  characteristics  that  are  of  interest. 

The  first  and  simplest  idea  of  tragedy  is  of  a 
play  with  an  unhappy  ending.  That  is  not  very 
abstruse,  but  it  is  characteristic  of  all  tragedies — 
Greek,  Elizabethan,  French,  modern — what  more 
would  you  have? 

Why,  this  much  more,  a  knowledge  of  why  an 
unhappy  ending  should  be  pleasing  to  us,  why  we 
should  think  it  delightful  to  see  an  unhappy  end- 
ing,— in  fact,  whether  every  unhappy  ending  is 
pleasing  to  us, — ^why  any  one  should  call  the  writ- 
ing of  a  play  with  an  unhappy  ending  the  top 
achievement  of  the  human  intellect?  In  other 
words,  Is  not  this  unhappy  ending  something 
necessary  to  tragedy,  perhaps,  but  not  the  essen- 
tial characteristic?  In  logic  a  quality  always  to 
be  found,  and  yet  not  essential,  is  called  an  insep- 
arable accident.  For  instance,  it  is  in  England 
an  inseparable  accident  with  a  clergyman  that  he 
wears  a  white  tie,  and  yet  this  costume  has  no  es- 
sential connection  with  his  holy  calling.  Perhaps 
the  true  and  essential  tragic  quality  necessitates 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  187 

an  unhappy  ending  as  far  as  the  chief  character 
is  concerned,  and  yet  that  unhappy  ending  is  not 
itself  the  essentially  tragic  thing.  In  fact  this 
is  almost  necessarily  the  case,  for  in  a  tragedy 
we  feel  the  tragic  quality  long  before  the  end,  and 
therefore  it  cannot  be  the  end  only  that  has  the 
tragic  quality. 

And,  even  if  it  could  rationally  be  the  case,  the 
unhappiness  of  the  end  would  hardly  be  a  sufficient 
explanation,  for  we  should  still  want  to  know  why 
the  end  seemed  to  us  unhappy.  A  tragic  ending 
is  often  the  death  of  the  hero.  But  death  is  not 
necessarily  unhappy — in  a  large  way,  that  is.  To 
those  immediately  concerned  it  is  always  a  cause 
of  unhappiness,  it  is  true.  But  death  is  a  neces- 
sity, and  we  would  not,  even  if  we  could,  avoid  it ; 
even  M.  Metchnikoff  agrees  to  that.  It  is  the 
natural,  the  appropriate  end  of  our  life  here.  It 
is  often  not  tragic  at  all,  but  triumphant,  glo- 
rious. Why  is  such  and  such  a  death  unhappy.? 
The  word  merely  begs  the  question  and  puts  us  on 
a  new  inquiry  no  easier  than  the  old. 

So  those  who  like  to  speculate  on  such  matters 
have  thought  of  other  reasons,  and  a  good  many 
other  definitions  and  descriptions  of  the  idea  of 
tragedy  have  been  put  forward.  I  shall  not  deal 
with  them  for  many  reasons,  one  of  which  is  that 
it  would  take  a  whole  book  instead  of  the  tail-end 


188  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

of  one,  and  another,  that  it  is  more  amusing  to 
hear  a  man  talk  of  what  he  thinks  himself,  than  of 
what  other  people  think. 

It  is  the  general  opinion — and  a  very  natural 
one — that,  in  trying  to  determine  the  nature  of 
the  tragic  quality,  we  must  find  something  which 
does  not  belong  to  the  drama  alone.  We  use  the 
word  "  tragic  "  far  too  widely  to  confine  ourselves 
to  anything  to  be  found  only  in  dramatic  form. 
If  it  were  for  no  other  reason  than  that  the  drama 
represents  life,  we  might  say  that  whatever  is 
effective  in  a  large  way  in  the  drama  will  be  an 
element  effective  in  life  as  well.  But  then,  also, 
we  use  the  word,  half  figuratively  perhaps,  but 
still  broadly.  In  all  forms  of  literature  we  have 
what  we  may  call  tragedy,  and  in  life  as  well. 
Indeed,  if  we  were  going  into  a  general  theoretical 
consideration,  we  ought  to  go  far  beyond  the 
narrow  limits  of  the  drama;  all  literature,  all  art 
we  ought  to  examine,  history,  life  we  ought  to  con- 
sider to  find  the  essential  of  the  tragic  quality. 

Looking  on  the  matter,  without  confining  our- 
selves necessarily  to  literature,  tragedy  seems  to 
depend  largely  upon  a  sense  on  our  part  of  in- 
soluble mystery  or  strangeness,  in  some  action  or 
bit  of  life  that  we  are  viewing.  Such  a  sense 
everybody  must  have  very  often  had  in  viewing 
life,  art,  literature.      Let  us  consider  a  case  or 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  189 

two ;  take  the  example  of  Heinrich  the  Bell-caster, 
he  whose  love  of  art  led  him  away  from  his  home 
to  a  mountain-top;  led  him  to  desert  his  wife  for 
a  mountain-spirit;  led  him  finally  to  that  point 
where  his  wife  sought  refuge  beneath  the  waters 
of  the  mountain  tarn,  while  his  mountain-spirit 
vanished  away  to  the  home  of  the  Nickelmann. 
Here  would  be  a  tragedy  entirely  aside  from  Hein- 
rich's  dying.  It  would  be  a  tragedy  surely,  even 
if  he  were  left  alive,  because  we  can  see  how  life 
would  continue  with  him.  And  why  a  tragedy? 
Can  we  analyse  it.?  For  one  thing,  we  may  note 
that  we  have  here  a  pretty  general  motive,  the 
contest  between  the  life  of  art  and  the  everyday 
life  of  home,  the  contest  that  finds  expression  now- 
adays in  all  sorts  of  forms,  notably  in  d'Annun- 
zio's  "  Giaconda  "  and  Sudermann's  "  Heimat," 
or  in  the  figure  of  Marchbanks  in  "  Candida." 
The  thing  is  this:  here  is  Art,  the  pursuit  of  the 
Beautiful,  the  care-charmer,  the  teacher,  the  great 
amuser  of  mankind,  the  recuperator  of  the  weary 
by  ever-changing  delight — art  is  all  that,  is  it 
not?  a  very  necessary  factor  in  life,  I  am  sure. 
And  yet  how  often  does  this  very  necessary  factor 
jar  and  collide  with  and  crush  that  other  very 
necessary  factor,  namely,  the  simple,  plain,  good 
life  of  the  home,  of  morality,  of  every  day.  And 
vice  versa.     Is  there  not  an  instinctive  contrast 


190  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

between  the  idea  of  the  artist  and  the  idea  of  the 
father,  the  citizen,  the  respectable  everyday  man? 
There  certainly  is,  although  we  may  get  over  it  by 
thinking  we  ought  to,  and  that  there  should  be 
any  such  contrast,  that  there  should  be  a  conflict, 
as  it  were,  between  these  two  important  elements 
in  life,  that  they  should  seem  inharmonious,  is 
surely,  to  me  at  least,  a  very  strange  thing,  a 
matter  not  yet  solved  and  made  plain  to  us.  Hence 
pictures  of  this  strife,  if  they  be  broad  and  gen- 
eral, give  us  the  tragic  element.  If  they  be  well 
done  they  impress  us  powerfully,  because  they 
thrust  us  into  a  region  where  we  are  afraid,  where 
we  cannot  reckon  upon  results,  where  we  cannot 
answer  the  pressing  questions  which  come,  but 
have  simply  to  acknowledge  that  we  do  not  know. 
Not  that  everything  that  we  do  not  understand 
is  tragic.  There  are  many  things  that  we  do  not 
understand  at  all,  although  we  always  behave  as 
though  we  did,  namely,  those  things  that  are  a 
great  joy  to  us.  The  nature  of  love,  for  instance, 
is  very  imperfectly  understood  by  us,  yet  happy 
love  is  not  tragic,  because,  though  we  do  not  pene- 
trate to  its  depths,  it  seems  all  right  and  precisely 
what  it  should  be.  It  does  not  seem  to  us  a  mys- 
tery, it  seems  very  natural  and  necessary,  and,  in- 
deed, when  we  get  used  to  it,  an  everyday  affair. 
The  normal  course  of  love  is  like  the  normal  course 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  191 

of  many  other  things :  the  question  of  comprehen- 
sion, of  understanding,  simply  never  comes  up  in 
regard  to  them,  we  do  not  try  to  understand  them, 
we  see  that  they  work  to  the  advantage  of  man- 
kind, that  they  are  in  harmony  with  life  as  we  look 
at  it,  that  we  could  not  make  them  better  in  any 
detail,  and  so,  whether  we  grasp  them  intellectu- 
ally or  not,  we  do  not  trouble  ourselves  about 
them.  And  yet  sometimes  even  happy  love,  since 
we  have  spoken  of  it,  has  its  tragic  element.  I 
spoke  a  few  pages  back  of  Mr.  Sothern's  presenta- 
tion of  "  Romeo  and  Juliet."  One  of  the  most 
beautiful  moments  in  the  play,  and  yet  the  most 
pitiful  and  the  most  tragic,  was  that  scene  at  the 
Capulet  feast,  where  these  two  who  loved  at  iSrst 
sight  first  are  conscious  that  they  love.  It  is  not 
that  we  know  what  is  about  to  happen  to  them 
that  gives  us  a  thrill.  No,  it  is  simply  the  strange 
sight  of  these  two,  their  souls  in  their  eyes,  mov- 
ing mechanically  in  the  world  of  masquers,  Juliet 
in  the  dance,  Romeo  by  the  wall,  with  life  to  them 
a  totally  different  thing  from  what  it  was  a  mo- 
ment before.  Certainly  a  very  strange  concep- 
tion, and  well  calculated  to  stagger  any  one  with- 
out great  indifference  or  great  confidence  in  the 
order  of  Nature  and  in  her  always  proceeding  in 
the  very  best  way.  Still,  as  a  rule,  such  situations 
are  not  conceived  of  as  tragic. 


192  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

Another  great  mass  of  circumstances  Is  not 
tragic,  even  though  It  presents  us  with  most  note- 
worthy Inconsistencies  or  Incongruities.  This  is 
where  the  circumstances  are  trivial  or  superficial. 
Matters  of  this  sort  are  not  tragic,  but  comic. 
The  foundation  of  the  Ludicrous  Is  often  said  to 
be  the  Incongruous,  and  the  Incongruous  Is  that 
which  for  the  moment  is  inconsistent.  And  the 
inconsistent  is  something  that  we  cannot  for  the 
moment  harmonise  in  our  thoughts  or  render  com- 
prehensible. The  ludicrous  often,  indeed  always, 
depends  upon  the  point  of  view.  Thus  a  dignified 
gentleman  walking  on  the  street  steps  on  the  ice 
or  upon  a  piece  of  orange-peel  and  falls  down.  It 
Is  very  funny  to  some  people,  but  the  man  himself 
rarely  perceives  the  humour  of  it.  It  Is  Incon- 
gruous, the  contrast  between  his  dignity  and  his 
lack  of  dignity.  For  the  moment  the  mind  of  the 
spectator  refuses  to  correlate  the  ideas.  But  in 
a  minute  the  situation  becomes  perfectly  natural; 
pitiable,  but  not  tragic.  Experience  steps  In  and 
tells  us  that  there  is  nothing  incongrous  or  incon- 
sistent. And  the  matter  ceases  to  be  ludicrous. 
If  you  come  home  and  tell  some  one  that  you  saw 
a  dignified  man  fall  down  upon  the  ice,  you  can- 
not, probably,  make  it  seem  funny  to  anybody  else 
because,  although  It  is  incongruous  to  them  as  it 
was  to  you,  so  far  as  the  minor  aspects  of  the 


OUR  roEA  OF  TRAGEDY  193 

matter  are  concerned,  the  mind  Is  not  taken  by 
surprise,  and  regards  the  matter  as  one  of  the 
necessary  and  normal  results  of  winter. 

Other  cases,  however,  present  more  difficulty  In 
discrimination.  There  are  not  a  few  cases  where 
the  same  thing  may  seem  tragic  or  humorous. 
The  classic  example,  as  we  may  say,  Is  that  of 
Mr.  Shandy  and  My  Uncle  Toby.  Here  were  two 
brothers  who  loved  each  other  devotedly,  and  yet 
were  totally  unable  to  understand  each  other.  As 
Sterne  handles  the  situation,  fixing  attention  on 
minor  points,  veiling  any  deeper  feelings  that 
might  have  been  aroused,  it  Is  very  purely  hu- 
morous. But  after  all.  It  Is  not  a  humorous  sit- 
uation If  dealt  with  seriously.  Two  beings  bound 
together  by  close  ties,  loving  each  other  but  never 
able  to  understand  each  other,  something  like  that 
Is  the  situation  on  which  Ibsen  built  "  The  Doll's 
House."  The  same  thing  may  often  be  comic  and 
tragic  to  different  people.  The  nose  of  Cyrano 
de  Bergerac  was  intensely  humorous  to  many 
about  him:  It  was  so  incongruous  that  it  was 
enough  to  make  anybody  laugh  who  could  keep 
out  of  the  way  of  the  owner.  But  to  Cyrano  him- 
self It  was  far  from  humorous,  and  It  shows  the 
power  of  the  dramatist  that  he  makes  us  forget 
the  ridiculous  possibilities,  so  that  the  figure  of 
Cyrano  Is  really  a  noble  one. 


194  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

Incongruity  is  merely  inconsistency,  merely 
that  we  cannot  comprehend  two  things  in  one 
thought.  Incomprehensibleness  is  at  the  bottom 
of  tragedy.  We  must  have  something  great, 
something  of  importance,  and  then,  if  the  incon- 
gruity, the  inconsistency,  be  brought  out  strongly 
and  poignantly,  the  thing  is  done. 

One  reason  for  disagreement  as  to  tragic  qual- 
ity is  that  it  often  happens  that  a  thing  is  im- 
portant to  one  set  of  people,  but  not  to  another. 
Then  there  will  be  difference  of  opinion.  For  ex- 
ample, the  so-called  problem-plays  of  Mr.  Pinero. 
These  plays  are  not  great  tragedies  because  they 
(and  their  problems)  do  not  make  a  very  wide 
appeal.  For  example,  "  Iris  " :  the  motive  of 
"  Iris  "  is  that  of  the  weak  woman  who  wants  to  be 
good  but  wants  more  to  have  an  easy,  delightful, 
luxurious,  lazy  time.  That  motive  may  be  capable 
of  tragic  force.  Such  women  may  have  much 
charm  and  beauty  of  character,  so  that  in  easy 
circumstances  they  add  to  the  true  joy  of  the 
world.  Iris  was  such  a  one.  She  was  even  more: 
she  was — in  ways  that  did  not  trouble  her — good 
and  generous.  Now,  why  should  such  good  char- 
acteristics all  be  overbalanced  by  this  one  evil.'* 
Further,  Iris  was  practically  betrayed  by  her  own 
generosity.  Why  should  one's  doing  a  good  thing 
lead   one   inexorably    to    the   doing    such   wrong 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  196 

things  that  one's  hfe  Is  wrecked  and  other  people's 
too?  There  seems  to  be,  then,  the  possibility  of 
tragedy  there,  because  that  is  one  of  the  mysteries 
of  the  human  heart  and  of  divine  law.  But  even 
were  the  motive  more  strongly  worked  out,  the 
tragedy  would  not  be  a  great  one  because,  in  the 
form  In  which  It  comes  to  us.  It  Is  not  of  wide 
application.  I  suppose  I  do  not  know  a  single 
Iris  myself,  and  I  question  whether  the  average 
man  does.  I  may  be  able  to  Imagine  them  readily, 
I  may  be  able  to  judge  that  there  are  not  a  few 
of  them  In  certain  spheres  of  life.  But  the  ques- 
tion does  not  come  near  enough  home  to  me,  or 
to  most  people,  for  us  to  call  It  really  tragic.  So 
of  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  Mrs.  Ebbsmlth,  and  the  rest 
of  Mr.  PInero's  problematic  ladles.  They  are  Im- 
mensely Interesting  to  themselves  and  their  friends, 
no  doubt,  but  only  by  great  art  could  they  be 
made  so  vivid  to  the  world  at  large  as  to  become 
great  figures.  Alexandre  Dumas  achieved  the 
difficult  feat  when  he  created  Marguerite  Gau- 
tler,  La  Dame  aux  Camelias,  commonly  called  by 
us  Camille.  When  I  saw  the  play  I  was  a  boy 
in  college;  It  Is  a  season  when  such  motives  seem 
more  real  than  in  after  years.  I  remember  per- 
fectly well  standing  up  In  the  back  of  the  theatre 
with  the  tears  rolling  down  my  cheeks.  In  fact 
I  remember  myself  much  better  than  I  remember 


196  OUR  roEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

Marguerite  Gautler,  though  I  occasionally  stimu- 
late my  memory  by  reading  the  play  over.  The 
fact  is  that  she  does  not  have  a  universal  appeal. 

The  more  important  the  case,  the  wider  the 
appeal,  the  more  certain  of  success, — other  things 
being  equal, — is  the  tragedy.  It  is  in  this  way 
that  I  explain  the  success  of  M.  Rostand.  The 
motive  of  all  his  plays  is  the  same.  It  is  not  very 
clearly  presented.  It  is  usually  conceived  in  a 
spirit  that  impresses  the  audience  as  pessimistic, 
but  it  is  always  there  and  always  the  same  and 
always  the  strongest  motive  in  the  world.  It  is 
that  of  the  failure  of  the  idealist  to  attain  the 
height  of  his  aspiration. 

In  the  "  Princesse  Lointaine  "  the  imaginative 
Rudel  loves  the  ideal  princess  of  Tripoli.  He  dies 
before  attaining  his  ideal,  but  also  before  he  knows 
what  his  ideal  was  worth,  save  as  an  ideal.  In 
"  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  "  we  have  a  man  who  has, 
a,nd  who  knows  that  he  has, — and  we  know  it  too, 
— tremendous  powers,  but  who  is  never  able  to 
realise  them,  who  is  never  able  to  appear  to  the 
world  as  he  knows  he  is.  There  is  that  fatal  im- 
pediment. Purely  typical  that  is,  but  every  one 
has  something  of  the  sort,  for  it  is  inherent  in 
human  nature  that  the  flesh  should  hold  back  the 
spirit.  In  his  case  the  spirit  of  the  man  is  so 
fine,  he  is  so  brilliant,  so  vigorous,  so  courageous, 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  197 

that  he  carries  it  all  off  with  a  vitality  that  makes 
us  almost  forget  the  tragedy.  But  it  is  there  all 
the  same.  In  "  L'Aiglon  "  we  have  the  idealist 
once  more,  the  man  who  has  the  greatest  ideal  of 
his  time,  the  finest,  noblest,  most  splendid  possi- 
bility, at  least,  waiting  for  him,  calling  insistently, 
beckoning,  but  he  cannot  ever  reach  it,  chiefly  be- 
cause he  cannot  even  understand  what  it  is.  To 
the  Due  de  Reichstadt  Napoleon  was  a  man  of 
victories  and  processions  and  uniforms.  He  real- 
ises as  the  play  goes  on  that  he  cannot  even  in 
thought  rise  to  the  ideal  before  him,  much  less 
realise  it  in  fact.  He  is  noble  because  he  even 
then  clings  to  his  ideal  because  It  is  an  ideal.  A 
tragic  figure  he  is  on  the  field  of  Wagram,  re- 
lapsing Into  the  pathetic  when  In  the  last  act  he 
becomes,  as  one  might  say,  more  of  a  child  than 
ever.  And  this  constant  defeat  of  the  idealist 
in  this  world  I  take  to  be  a  matter  not  thoroughly 
understood  by  us.  It  is  true  that  the  poets  offer 
their  explanations,  Tennyson  with  his 

"  O  me !  for  why  is  all  around  us  here 
As  if  some  lesser  god  had  made  the  world, 
But  had  not  force  to  shape  it  as  he  would, 
Till  the  High  God  behold  it  from  beyond, 
And  enter  it  and  make  it  beautiful !  " 

and  Browning  with  his  constant  optimism: 


198  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

"  Ah,  but  a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp. 
Or  what's  a  heaven  for?  " 

But  I  cannot  say  that  the  explanations  make  it 
very  clear  to  me.  Still  it  is  the  incomprehensible 
nature  of  the  thing  that  makes  it  striking.  It 
masters  us ;  if  we  understood  it,  we  should  master 
it.  If  we  understood  it  thoroughly,  and  saw  that 
it  was  just  as  we  should  imagine  it,  or  as  we 
might  ourselves  have  arranged  it,  or  even  as  we 
acknowledge  just,  then  we  should  not  think  it  any- 
thing very  much  out  of  the  common  run.  It 
would  make  us  cynical,  perhaps,  or  hopeless,  but 
it  would  not  be  the  medicina  mentis  that  trag- 
edy is. 

Such — at  any  rate  let  me  assume  it,  for  the 
time,  in  spite  of  conflicts,  missions,  tragic  blames, 
and  anything  else — such  is  tragedy  always,  a  pur- 
suing of  some  of  the  strange  and  unexplainable 
courses  of  life.  The  finer  and  nobler  the  actors, 
the  greater  and  more  general  the  evil  that  they 
do  not  escape,  the  greater  the  tragedy.  We  see 
it  in  the  Greek  drama,  and  we  see  it  in  the  Eliza- 
bethan. In  the  "  Prometheus  "  we  have  the  friend 
of  man,  and  therefore  one  who  must  endure  a  life 
of  torture,  as  so  many  friends  of  man  have  endured 
since  his  day.  In  "  Hamlet "  we  have  the  man  in 
whom  the  godlike  reason  was  stronger  than  in  any 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  199 

other  man  of  his  time,  and  who  therefore  fell  a  vic- 
tim to  an  unscrupulous  politician.  And  the  same 
thing  is  in  modern  plays,  as  we  have  seen,  whether 
presented  in  the  beautiful  and  glittering  forms  of 
romance  or  in  the  more  immediate  forms  of  every- 
day life. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  element  is 
there, — may  be  found,  I  believe,  in  every  great 
tragedy  in  the  drama,  literature,  in  life.  But 
even  if  so  the  real  question  is :  Is  it  this  that  thrills 
and  holds  us,  when  we  read  the  drama  or  see  the 
play-f*  Is  it  this  that  impresses  us  with  what  we 
call  the  Tragic  ? 

To  give  a  sort  of  answer  to  this  question  I  must 
be  a  little  pedantic.  We  all  know  the  position  of 
Aristotle  in  the  intellectual  world,  how  he  domi- 
nated the  thought  of  man  for  centuries  and  is  to- 
day as  wise  as  ever,  though  not  so  dictatorial.  He 
thought  about  almost  everything  in  his  day  and  he 
did  not  disdain  the  drama.  He  viewed  the  Athe- 
nian drama  of  his  time  just  as  he  viewed  the 
science,  the  oratory,  the  politics,  the  constitutional 
principles,  and  everything  else.  He  analysed  its 
power  and  stated  it  in  words  that  have  given  the 
theorists  great  opportunities. 

"  Tragedy,"  he  says,  "  is  an  imitation  of  an 
action  that  is  serious,  complete,  and  of  a  certain 
magnitude;   in   language  embellished  with  every 


200  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

kind  of  artistic  ornament,  the  several  kinds  being 
found  in  separate  parts  of  the  play;  in  the  form 
of  action  not  of  narrative,  through  pity  and  awe 
effecting  the  proper  Katharsis  of  these  emotions." 

This  word  Katharsis,  it  seems  generally  agreed, 
was  a  medical  term,  meaning  much  the  same  thing 
as  our  word  purgative.  Tragedy  is  a  purge  to  the 
moral  nature,  it  would  appear,  is  the  idea  of  Aris- 
totle. It  is  an  influence  upon  our  moral  nature, 
a  purifying,  strengthening,  reviving  influence.  It 
does  away  with  certain  evils  that  annoy  our  daily 
life.  Its  very  bitterness — like  the  purge  in  "  Pil- 
grim's Progress '' — has  this  effect  upon  us,  and 
we  listen  to  a  tragedy  with  the  same  acrid  sense  of 
tonic  improvement  that  we  feel  when  we  are  get- 
ting over  a  cold,  say,  or  an  illness.  That  seems 
to  be  Aristotle's  view :  I  take  it  to  be  pretty  sound. 
It  shows  that  two  thousands  years  ago  he  noticed 
what  we  may  notice  to-day. 

Certain  things  in  human  life  have  this  effect 
upon  us,  though  they  commonly  work  in  rather 
a  drawn-out  way,  and  in  art,  in  so  far  as  art 
represents  life.  In  tragedy  we  appreciate  Man 
as  Pope  thought  of  him,  that  much-neglected  poet 
who  said  so  many  things  so  much  better  than  any 
one  else  could  ever  say  them.  Pope  saw  the  fact, 
though  he  had  not  the  artistic  feeling  to  put  it  in 
any  but  an  intellectual  way: 


OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY  201 

**  Placed  on  this  isthmus  of  a  middle  state, 
A  being  darkly  wise  and  rudely  great; 
With  too  much  knowledge  for  the  sceptic  side^. 
With  too  much  weakness  for  the  stoic's  pride, 
He  hangs  between,  in  doubt  to  act  or  rest, 
In  doubt  to  deem  himself  a  god  or  beast. 
In  doubt  his  mind  or  body  to  prefer, 
Bom  but  to  die,  and  reasoning  but  to  err ; 
Alike  in  ignorance,  his  reason  such. 
Whether  he  thinks  too  little  or  too  much; 
Chaos  of  thought  and  passion  all  confused. 
Still  by  himself  abused  and  disabused ; 
Created  half  to  rise  and  half  to  fall, 
Great  Lord  of  all  things,  yet  a  prey  to  all. 
Sole  judge  of  truth,  in  endless  error  hurled, 
The  glory,  jest,  and  riddle  of  the  world! " 

The  glory  to  the  eye  of  faith,  but  the  jest  to» 
the  comedian  and  the  riddle  to  those  in  whom  the 
spirit  is  tuned  to  the  note  of  tragedy. 

Or  in  other  words,  when  we  have  put  before  us 
one  of  those  poignant  scenes,  or  situations,  or  mo- 
ments, or  figures  of  human  life,  where  good  and 
evil,  strength  and  weakness  are  so  inextricably 
mixed,  where  all  that  might,  that  should  turn  out 
so  well,  does  turn  out  so  ill,  then  we  cannot  com- 
prehend intellectually,  do  not  try  to,  we  can  sim- 
ply receive  the  impression  emotionally  or  spiritu- 


202  OUR  IDEA  OF  TRAGEDY 

ally,  we  cannot  but  be  seized  by  a  mixture  of  pity 
and  awe,  as  Aristotle  says.  And  that  feeling  is 
our  feeling  for  the  Tragic. 

It  leaves  us  calmed  and  quieted.  Things  seem 
a  little  different.  Everyday  matters  at  which  we 
were  so  hot,  for  the  moment  are  small  and  petty. 
We  feel  in  a  confused  way  that  life  is  something 
fine,  big,  and  noble,  and  that  we  ourselves  are  not 
the  only  people  of  importance.  It  does  not  last, 
of  course;  we  shall  again  be  angered,  ridiculous, 
blunderers,  but  for  the'  time  we  are  satisfied.  We 
are  willing  to  continue  our  lives  in  their  silly  indi- 
viduality, feeling  that  we  may  confidently  trust 
in  a  power  whose  detailed  purposes  have  not  been 
explained  to  us. 

Such  in  its  result  is  the  general  effect  of  the 
greatest  art.  It  is  of  great  art  that  that  figure 
of  the  beautiful  youth  that  Emerson  mentions  is 
typical.  Phosphorus,  whose  aspect  is  such  that  all 
persons  who  look  upon  it  become  silent. 


APPENDIX, 

PERFORMANCE  OR  PUBLICATION 

In  the  following  lists  are  the  dates  of  the  first 
performance  or  publication  of  the  plays  of  our 
dramatists.  They  do  not  pretend  to  do  more  than 
to  show  the  place  of  each  play  in  the  author's 
career,  and  to  give  a  general  idea  of  his  activity 
and  of  public  interest  in  his  work.  Many  matters 
of  curious  interest  are  therefore  omitted.  This 
is  especially  the  case  with  Bernard  Shaw  and 
M.  Maeterhnck,  whose  plays  have  been  performed 
at  all  sorts  of  times  and  places,  but  not,  as  a  rule, 
immediately  on  writing.  Performances  in  coun- 
tries or  languages  other  than  the  author's  have 
been  noted,  but  without  idea  of  completeness,  to 
give  an  idea  of  the  way  the  author  has  come  before 
the  public.  The  facts  come  wherever  possible 
from  the  published  texts  of  the  authors,  but  in 
other  cases  from  periodicals,  newspapers,  dramatic 
fists,  etc. 


EDMOND   ROSTAND 

(Unless  especially  mentioned,  the  place  of  produce 
tion  was  Paris) 

1894.  May  21.  Theatre  Fran9ais.  Les  Ro- 
manesques :  Comedie  en  trois  actes  en  vers. 
Given  at  the  Empire  Theatre,  New  York, 
February  24,  1901,  by  the  American 
Academy  of  Dramatic  Arts,  under  the 
name  of  "  The  Fantastics."  It  has  also 
been  given  of  late  in  German  at  the  Irving 
Place  Theatre. 

1895,  April  5.  Theatre  de  la  Renaissance.  La 
Princesse  Lointaine:  Piece  en  quatre 
actes  en  vers.  The  part  of  Melissande 
was  created  by  Mme.  Sarah  Bernhardt. 

189T.  April  14.  Theatre  de  la  Renaissance. 
La  Samaritaine  :  Evangile  en  trois  ta- 
bleaux. The  part  of  Photine  by  Mme. 
Bernhardt.  The  piece  is  said  to  have  been 
very  successful,  and,  I  understand,  has 
several  times  been  revived  during  Holy 
Week. 

1897.  December  28.  Theatre  de  la  Porte  Saint- 
Martin.  Cyrano  de  Bergerac:  Comedie 
Heroique  en  cinq  actes  en  vers.  The  most 
205 


^06  APPENDIX 

brilliant  theatrical  success  of  the  dec- 
ade* In  the  United  States  it  was  given 
by  Mr.  Richard  Mansfield  at  the  Garden 
Theatre,  New  York,  October  3,  1898.  In 
London,  at  Wyndham's  Theatre,  with  Mr. 
Wyndham  as  Cyrano,  April  19,  1900,  it 
did  not  seem  to  hit  the  public  taste.  It 
has  been  given,  In  a  translation  by  Ludwig 
Fulda,  In  many  cities  of  Germany  and 
Austria,  and  In  New  York  also.  Given  in 
French  at  the  Garden  Theatre,  New  York, 
December  10,  1900,  by  Mme.  Bernhardt 
and  M.  Coquelln. 
1900.  March  15.  Theatre  Sarah  Bernhardt. 
L'Aiglon:  Drame  en  six  actes  en  vers. 
First  given  In  the  United  States  at  the 
Academy  of  Music,  Baltimore,  October  15, 
1900.  At  Her  Majesty's  Theatre,  Lon- 
don, June  1,  1901.  In  French  at  the 
Garden  Theatre,  New  York,  November  26, 
1900,  by  Mme.  Bernhardt  and  M.  Coquelln. 


GERHARDT  HAUPTMANN 

(Unless  especially  mentioned,  the  place  of  produc^ 
tion  was  Berlin) 

1889.  October  20.  Lessing-Theater,  under  the 
auspices  of  the  society  Die  freie  Biihne. 
VoR  SoNNENAUFGANG :  Soziales  Drama. 
The  production  of  this  play  was  an  im- 
mensely exciting  event,  being  regarded  as 
a  battle  between  the  new  school  and  the 
old.  Like  most  of  the  plays  following,  it 
has  been  given  at  the  Irving  Place  Theatre, 
New  York. 

1890.  June  1.  Lessing-Theater.  Das  Friedens- 
fest:  Eine  Famihenkatastrophe.  This 
play  had  already  appeared  in  the  news- 
paper Die  freie  Biihne, 

1891.  January  11.  Deutsches  Theater.  Ein- 
SAME  Menschen  :  Drama.  This  had  been 
presented  shortly  before  by  the  Freie 
Biihne.  It  has  been  given  in  German  in 
New  York,  by  Mr.  Conried,  of  course,  and 
in  English  as  "  Lonely  Lives  "  at  the  Em- 
pire Theatre  December  11,  190^,  by  the 
American  Academy  of  Dramatic  Arts. 

207 


208  APPENDIX 

1892.  January  16.  Deutsches  Theater.  Col- 
lege Crampton  :    Komodie  in  f iinf  akten. 

1893.  February  26.  Die  freie  Biihne.  Die 
Weber:  Schauspiel  aus  den  vierziger 
Jahren.  The  play  was  to  have  been  given 
at  the  Deutsches  Theater,  but  was  forbid- 
den, and  so  not  presented  there  till  Septem- 
ber 25,  1894.  It  has  been  given  in  Paris 
as  "  Les  Tisserands "  at  M.  Antoine's 
Theatre  Libre. 

1893.  September  21.  Deutsches  Theater.  Dee 
BiBERPELZ :  Eine  Diebskomodie. 

1893.  November  14.  Konigliches  Schauspiel- 
haus.  Hanneles  Himmelfahrt  :  Traum- 
dichtung  in  zwei  Theilen.  There  were  diffi- 
culties in  regard  to  the  presentation  of  this 
play  also.  It  appeared  the  next  year  at 
the  Theatre  Libre,  Paris,  and  also  at  the 
Fifth  Avenue  Theatre,  New  York. 

1896.  January  4.  Deutsches  Theater.  Floriak 
Geyer.  As  first  presented  this  play  was  a 
failure,  to  the  great  chagrin  of  the  author, 
who  had  put  his  best  work  into  it.  He 
revised  it  subsequently,  and  it  was  given 
at  the  Lessing-Theater,  October  22,  1904, 
but  I  have  not  been  able  to  get  a  satisfac- 
tory account  of  the  nature  of  the  revision 
or  of  its  success. 

1896.    December    2.      Deutsches    Theater.      Die 

VERsuNKENE  Glocke.    This  play  has  been 

i^\Vr^-     Hauptmann's  great  public  success;  it  at 


APPENDIX  209 

once  stirred  up  criticism  and  controversy 
in  Grermany,  and  became  more  widely 
known  than  anything  he  had  yet  done.  It 
was  given  to  crowded  houses  by  Frau 
Agnes  Sorma  at  the  Irving  Place  Theatre, 
New  York,  April  29,  1897,  and  afterward. 
It  did  not  appear  in  English,  however, 
until  December  21,  1899,  at  the  HolKs 
Street  Theatre,  Boston,  where  it  was  pre- 
sented by  Mr.  Sothern. 

1898.  November  5.  Deutsches  Theater.  Fuhr- 
MANK  Henschel:  Schauspiel  in  fiinf 
Akten. 

1900.  February  3.  Deutsches  Theater.  Schluck 
UND  Jau  :  Spiel  zu  Scherz  und  Schimpf . 

1900.  December  21.  Deutsches  Theater.  Michael 
Kramer. 

1901.  November  27.  Deutsches  Theater.  Der 
ROTE  Hahn  :   Tragikomodie  in  vier  Akten. 

1902.  November  29.  Hof  Burgtheater,  Wien. 
Der  arme  Heinrich  :  Eine  deutsche  Sage. 

1903.  October  31.  Deutsches  Theater.  Rose 
Bernd  :   Schauspiel  in  fiinf  Auf ziigen. 

1906.    March  11.     Lessing-Theater.     Elga. 


HERMANN  SUDERMANN 

(Unless  especially  mentioned,  the  place  of  produc- 
tion was  Berlin) 

1889.  November  £T.  Lessing-Theater.  Die 
Ehre:  Schauspiel  in  vier  Akten.  Often 
given  in  German.  In  English  ( "  Honour  '^ ) 
at  the  Criterion  Theatre,  New  York,  Jan- 
V  uary  26,  1905,  by  the  American  Academy 
of  Dramatic  Art. 

1891.  November  5.  Lessing-Theater.  Sodom's 
Ende:  Drama  in  fiinf  Akten.  This  play 
also  has  been  widely  given  in  German.  The 
first  performance  that  I  have  noted  in 
EngHsh  is  "  The  Man  and  His  Picture,'' 
Great  Queen  Street,  London,  March  8, 
1903. 

1893.  January  7.  Lessing-Theater.  Heimat: 
Schauspiel  in  vier  Akten.  This  is  the  most 
successful  play  that  has  been  written  of 
late.  It  holds  the  stage  better  than  any- 
thing even  of  Rostand  or  Hauptmann. 
The  character  of  Magda  has  attracted 
the  greatest  actresses  of  the  day — Mme. 
Bernhardt,  Signora  Duse,  Mrs.  Patrick 
Campbell,  Mrs.  Fiske,  Mme.  Mojeska,  as 
well  as  the  chief  German  actresses.  It  has 
210 


APPENDIX  211 

been  given  almost  everywhere,  often  under 
the  name  of  "  Magda." 

1894.  October  6.  Lessing-Theater.  Die  Schmet- 
TERLINGSSCHLACHT I  Komodie  in  vier  Akten. 

1895.  November  11.  Hof  Burgtheater,  Wien. 
Das  Gluck  im  Winkel  :  Schauspiel  in  drei 
Akten. 

^«r^^     ^  .  1       ^      (  Lessinff-Theater.  Berlin ;    ) 

1896.  October  3.    {  ^^^  B^^gtheater,  Wien.    } 

MoRiTURi:  Drei  Einakter;  Teja;  Fritz- 
chen;  Das  Ewig  Mannliche. 

1898.  January  15.  Deutsches  Theater.  Jo- 
hannes: Tragodie  in  fiinf  Akten  und 
einem  Vorspiel. 

1899.  January  21.  Deutsches  Theater.  Die. 
DREI  Reiherfedern  :  Ein  dramatisches 
Gedicht  in  fiinf  Akten. 
October  5.  Deutsches  Theater.  Johannes- 
FEUER.  Given  in  English  as  "  Fires  of  St. 
John,''  by  Miss  Nance  O'Neil,  at  the  Co- 
lumbia Theatre,  Boston,  January,  1904. 

1902.  February  10.  Deutsches  Theater.  Es 
LEBE  DAS  Leben:  Drama  in  fiinf  Akten. 
Given  by  Mrs.  Campbell  at  the  Garden 
Theatre,  New  York,  October  23,  1902.  At 
the  New  Theatre,  London,  June  24,  1903. 

1903.  October     3.        Lessing-Theater.        Der 
V    Sturmgeselle     Sokrates:     Komodie     in 

vier  Akten. 
1905.    October  7.  Lessing-Theater.   Stein  unter. 
Steinen  :  Schauspiel  in  vier  Akten. 


ARTHUR  WING  PINERO 

(Unless  especially  mentioned^  the  place  of  produc- 
tion was  London) 

1877.  October  6.  Globe  Theatre.  Two  Hun- 
dred A  Year  :  A  Comedietta  in  One  Act. 

1879.  September  ^0.  Lyceum  Theatre.  Daisy's 
Escape. 

1880.  June  5.  Folly  Theatre.  Hester's  Mys- 
tery :  A  Comedietta  in  One  Act. 

1880.  September  18.  Lyceum  Theatre,  By- 
gones :  A  Comedy  in  One  Act. 

1880.  November  5.  Theatre  Royal,  Manchester. 
The  Money  Spinner:  A  Drama  in  Two 
Acts.  This  was  the  first  play  of  Mr. 
Pinero's  to  attract  much  attention.  The 
production  at  Manchester  was  praised, 
and  the  play  was  brought  to  London,  where 
it  was  given,  January  8,  1881,  by  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Kendal,  Mr.  John  Hare,  and  others. 
It  was  considered  worthy  of  note  at  the 
time  by  an  accomplished  critic  that  "  Mr 
Pinero  invents  his  own  plots  and  writes  his 
own  dialogue,"  a  remark  very  signilScant 
as  to  the  English  stage  in  1880,  a  year 
212 


APPENDIX  21S 

in  which  "Forbidden  Fruit"   and  "The 
Guv'nor  "  were  the  popular  successes. 
1881.    July    27.     Folly    Theatre.     Imprudence. 
Given  at  the  Boston  Museum,  August  21, 
1882. 

1881.  Dec.  29.  St.  James  Theatre.  The  Sotire. 
Given  at  Daly's,  New  York,  Oct.  10,  1882. 

1882.  March  24.  Court  Theatre.  The  Rector  : 
A  Play  in  Four  Acts.  Given  at  the  Boston 
Museum,  December  31,  1883. 

1882.  October  31.  Toole's  Theatre.  Boys  and 
Girls.  Mr.  Pinero  was  still  on  the  stage 
and  took  a  part  in  this  play. 

1883.  July  30.  Prince  of  Wales'  Theatre,  Liver- 
pool. The  Rocket:  A  Comedy  in  Three 
Acts.  Given  December  10,  1883,  at  the 
Gaiety  Theatre,  London. 

1883.  November  24.  Haymarket  Theatre.  Lords 
AND  Commons  :  A  Comedy  in  Four  Acts. 

1884.  January  12.  Globe  Theatre.  Low 
Water  :  A  Comedy  in  Three  Acts. 

1884.  Written  but  not  presented  till  1888  (p. 
214).  The  Weaker  Sex.  It  was  to  have 
been  given  at  the  Court  Theatre,  but  was 
supplanted  by  the  following  piece. 

1885.  March  21.  Court  Theatre.  The  Magis- 
trate: A  Farce  in  Three  Acts.  This  is 
a  capital  piece,  though  how  good  one  can 
hardly  appreciate  without  comparing  it 
with  some  adaptations  from  the  French  of 
the  same  time.  It  was  remarkably  suc- 
cessful  (ran  for  more  than   a  year),   so 


214  APPENDIX 

that  it  determined  the  general  line  of  the 
Court  Theatre  for  some  time.  It  was 
given  at  Daly's  Theatre,  New  York,  and 
has  since  been  presented  all  over  Europe 
and  the  English  colonies. 
.1886.  March  27.  Court  Theatre.  The  School- 
mistress :  A  Farce  in  Three  Acts. 

1886.  October  2S.  Saint  James'  Theatre.  The 
Hobby  Horse  :  A  Comedy  in  Four  Acts. 

1887.  January  27.  Court  Theatre.  Dandy 
Dick:  A  Farce  in  Three  Acts.  Given  at 
Daly's  Theatre,  New  York,  October  5,  of 

J  the  same  year. 

N/a888.  March  21.  Terry's  Theatre.  Sweet 
Lavender.  With  the  exception  of  "  The 
Magistrate,"  this  is  the  most  popular  of 
Mr.  Pinero's  earlier  plays.  Indeed,  Mr. 
Winter  holds  it  to  be  "  a  thousand  times 
better  than  all  his  noxious  analyses  of 
social  sores."  It  was  given  at  Daly's 
Theatre,  November  12,  1888,  and  has  been 
seen  of  late  in  New  York  given  by  Mr. 
Terry,  for  whom  it  was  originally  written. 

1888.  September  28.  Theatre  Royal,  Man- 
chester. The  Weaker  Sex  :  A  Comedy  in 
Three  Acts.  Written  1884.  Given  at 
the  Court  Theatre,  March  19,  1889,  and 
by  the  Kendalls  during  an  American 
tour. 

j/l889.  April  M.    Garrick  Theatre.     The  Prof- 
^  X.IGATE:   A   Drama   in   Four   Acts.     This 


APPENDIX  215 

play,  which  was  the  first  strong  piece  of 
work  in  the  kind  wherein  Mr.  Pinero  is 
now  most  distinguished,  did  not  excite 
especial  attention.  It  was  not  produced 
in  this  country  until  1894,  when  people 
had  become  interested  in  the  author 
through  "  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray.'* 

1890.  April  2S.  Court  Theatre.  The  Cabinet 
Minister:  A  Farce  in  Four  Acts. 

1891.  March  7.  Garrick  Theatre.  Lady  Boun- 
tiful: A  Play  in  Four  Acts.  Not  en- 
tirely successful,  but  given  in  the  fall 
(November  16)  simultaneously  at  the 
Lyceum  Theatre,  New  York,  and  the  Bos- 
ton Museum. 

1891.  October  24.  Terry's  Theatre.  The 
Times  :  A  Comedy  in  Four  Acts.  Of  this 
play  Mr.  Pinero  himself  writes  that  "  It 
lays  bare  no  horrid  social  wound,  it 
wrangles  over  no  vital  problem  of  inex- 
tricable perplexity." 

1893.  March  7.  Court  Theatre.  The  Am- 
azons: A  Farcical  Romance  in  Three 
Acts.  Given  at  the  Lyceum,  New  York, 
the  next  year. 

1893.  May  27.  Saint  James'  Theatre.  The 
Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray:  A  Play  in 
Four  Acts.  Given  by  the  Kendals  at  the 
Star  Theatre,  New  York,  October  9,  1893. 
With  this  play  Mr.  Pinero  begins  to  be 
considered  seriously ;  it  has  been  much  dis- 


216  APPENDIX 

cussed,  and  good  critics  have  held  It  to  be 
a  great  tragedy;  a  view  which,  I  hope, 
(pp.  93,  94,  176,  195)  Is  quite  erroneous. 
Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  created  the  part 
of  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  and  the  part  did 
something  of  the  sort  In  return.  There 
have  been  French  and  Italian  versions 
given  In  many  places,  but  I  do  not  hear  of 
it  In  Germany. 

1896.  March  13.  Garrick  Theatre.  The  No- 
torious Mrs.  Ebbsmith.  A  very  good 
play.  Done  by  Mr.  John  Hare,  at  Ab- 
bey's Theatre,  New  York,  December  S3, 
1895.  Given  September  22,  1899,  at  the 
Lesslng-Theater,  Berlin,  under  the  name 
"  Die  Genossin." 

1895.  October  16.  Comedy  Theatre.  The 
Benefit  of  the  Doubt.  Given  at  the 
Lyceum,  New  York,  January  6,  1896. 

1897.  March  29.  St.  James'  Theatre.  The 
Princess  and  the  Butterfly;  or,  The 
Fantastics:  A  Comedy  In  Five  Acts. 
Given  at  the  Lyceum,  New  York,  Novem- 
ber 23,  1897. 

1898.  January  30.  Court  Theatre.  Trelawney 
OF  THE  Wells:  A  Comedietta  In  Four 
Acts.  Given  at  the  Lyceum,  New  York, 
November  22,  1898. 

1899.  April  8.  Globe  Theatre.  The  Gay  Lord 
QuEx:  A  Comedy  In  Four  Acts.  Given 
in  New  York  by  Mr.  Hare  a  year  or  so 


APPENDIX  217 

later.  Also  at  the  Lessing-Theater,  Ber- 
lin, January  13,  1900,  where  it  was  pro- 
nounced by  the  only  critic  I  have  noted, 
**  reichlich  langweilig  und  .  .  •  ein  be- 
dauerliches  Zeichen  flir  den  Tiefstand  des 
englischen  Geschmackes."  The  remark  is  in 
itself  an  interesting  sign  of  German  taste. 
1901.  September  21.  Garrick  Theatre.  Iris: 
A  Drama  in  Five  Acts.  Given  at  the 
Criterion  Theatre,  New  York,  September 
23,  1902. 

1903.  October  8.  Duke  of  York's  Theatre. 
Letty:  a  Drama  in  Four  Acts  and  an 
Epilogue.  Given  at  the  Hudson  Theatre^ 
New  York,  September  12,  1904. 

1904.  October  9.  Wyndham's  Theatre.  A  Wife 
WITHOUT  A  Smile:  A  Comedy  in  Dis- 
guise. Given  at  the  Criterion  Theatre^ 
New  York,  December  19,  1904. 

Some    translations    or    adaptations    have 
been  omitted. 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW 

(Unless  especially  mentioned,  the  place  of  produc- 
tion  was  London) 

1892.    Independent  Theatre.  Widowers'  Houses. 

^r^Qa  j  Written  for  the  Independent  )  ^ 
1  Theatre,  but  not  performed,  j 
Philanderers;  Mrs.  Warren's  Profes- 
sion. This  last  was  given  by  the  Stage 
Society  at  the  New  Lyric  Theatre,  Jan- 
uary 5,  1902.  Given  Hyperion  Theatre, 
New  Haven,  Oct.  27  ;  Garrick  Theatre,  New 
York,  Oct.  30,  1905,  for  one  night  only. 

1894.  April  21.  Avenue  Theatre.  Arms  and 
THE  Man.  Was  also  given  by  Mr.  Mans- 
field at  the  Herald  Square  Theatre,  New 
York,  September  17,  1894.  December  8, 
1904,  given  at  the  Deutsches  Theater, 
Berlin,  as  "  Helden.'' 

\/    1894.    Written  for  Mr.  Mansfield,  but  not  acted 

n    .    at  the  time.     Candida.     Given  at  Princess 

i\y         Theatre,  New  York,  December  9,  1903,  and 

at  the  Court  Theatre,  on  April  26,  1904. 

Given  at  the  Konigliches  Schauspielhaus, 

Dresden,  November  19,  1903. 

1895.  Written  but  not  publicly  given.   The  Man 

OF    Destiny.     Given    by    the    American 
218 


APPENDIX  219 

Academy  of  Dramatic  Arts  at  the  Empire 
Theatre,  New  York,  February  16,  1899, 
and  at  the  Neues  Theater,  Berlin,  Feb- 
ruary 10,  1904,  as  "Der  Schlachten- 
lenker." 

1896.  Written  but  not  pubhcly  given.  Yoir 
Never  Can  Tell.  Given  at  the  Strand 
Theatre  in  1900.  Given  January  9,  1905, 
at  the  Garrick  Theatre,  New  York. 

The  above  seven  plays  were  published 
1898  as  "  Plays  Pleasant  and  Unpleasant." 

1897.  October  1.  Bleecker  Hall,  Albany.  The 
Devil's  Disciple.  September  S6,  1899, 
at  the  Princess  of  Wales'  Theatre,  and  at 
the  Berliner  Theater,  November  25,  1904<, 
under  the  name  "  Ein  Teufelskerl." 

«i  ooo      A  4.1     (  Cjesar  and  Cleopatra.      ) 

1898.  Apparently  ]  ^  ^  ,    f 
^ort/^          r     •          '^  Captain  Brassbound  s  >• 

1899.  not  given.    J  ^  ( 

°  (^  Conversion.  J 

The  above  three  plays   were  published 
1900  as  "  Three  Plays  for  Puritans." 

1903.  Published.  Man  and  Superman.  Given 
at  the  Hudson  Theatre,  New  York,  Sep- 
tember 4,  1905. 

1904.  September  26.  Berkeley  Lyceum,  New 
York.     How  He  Lied  to  Her  Husband. 

1904.  October.  Court  Theatre.  John  Bull's 
Other  Island.  Given  at  the  Garrick 
Theatre,  New  York,  October  10,  1905. 

1906.  November  28.  Major  Barbara.  Court 
Theatre,  London. 


STEPHEN    PHILLIPS 

1899.  Published.  Paolo  and  Feancesca:  A 
Tragedy  in  Four  Acts.  Given  at  the  St. 
James  Theatre,  March  7,  190^. 

1900.  October  31.  Her  Majesty's  Theatre,  Lon- 
don. Herod:  A  Tragedy.  Given  at  the 
Vereinigten  Stadttheater,  Essen  -  Dort- 
mund, September  29,  1905. 

1902.  February  1.  Her  Majesty's  Theatre,  Lon- 
don. Ulysses:  A  Drama  in  a  Prologue 
and  Three  Acts.  Also  given  at  the  Gar- 
den Theatre,  New  York,  September  14*, 
1902. 

1904.  Published.  The  Sin  of  David.  Given  at 
the  Stadttheater,  Diisseldorf,  September 
30,  1905. 


22a 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

The  dates  given,  except  the  last  two,  are  those 
of  publication.  As  the  plays  were  not  imme- 
diately performed,  I  have  added  a  few  dates  of 
first  performances  in  various  countries,  but  the 
list  is  very  incomplete. 


1892. 


L'Intrus.  ^  The  first  two  given  by 

Les  Aveugles.  [  the    American    Acad- 
Les  Sept  j  emy  of  Dramatic  Arts 

Princesses.  J   at    the   Berkeley   Ly- 
ceum, New  York,  Feb- 
ruary 21,  1893,   and 
January     18,     1894, 
respectively. 
1893.  PelliSas  et  Md^lisande.     Given  at  Prince 
of  Wales'  Theatre,  London,  June  21, 1898 ; 
at  Victoria  Theatre,  New  York,  January 
28,  1902 ;  at  Opera  Comique,  Paris,  May, 
:1902,    as    a   lyric    drama   with   music   by 
Charles  Debussy. 

^21 


222 


APPENDIX 


1894f. 


1896. 
1901. 

1901. 
1902. 


1903. 


iNTifcEIEUR. 

AlLADINE  ET  PAIiAMIDES. 

Both  given  at  the  Carnegie  Lyceum 
by  the  American  Academy,  February 
18, 1896. 
La  Mort  de  Tintagiles.  Given  on  the 
Sezessionsbiihne,  Berhn,  November  12y 
1900. 

AgLAVAINE  ET  S:ftliYSETTE. 

Aeiane  ET  Barbe  BiiEtjE ;  ou,  La  Deli- 
vrance  Inutile.     Conte  en  trois  actes. 
S(EUR  Beatrice.     Miracle  en  trois  actes. 
May  17.    Nouveau  Theatre,  Paris.    Monna 
Vanna.     Piece  en  trois  actes.     Given  at 
the  Konigliches    Schauspielhaus,  Munich, 
September  27,  1902.    It  was  forbidden  in 
London.     In  America  it  has  been  seen  in 
German  at  the  Irving  Place  Theatre,  New 
York,  and  in  English  at  the  Manhattan 
Theatre,  October  23,  1905. 
May     20.     Theatre    du    Gymnase.     Joy- 
ZEiii^E:  Piece  en  cinq  actes. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


"Abcilles,  Les,"  174,  175 

Academy  of  Dramatic  Arts, 
American,  205,  207,  210, 
219,  221 

Academy,  The  French,  re- 
ception of  M.  Rostand  in- 
to, 12,  14,  90 

Addison,  91 

iEschylus,  185 

"  Aglavaine  et  Selysette," 
165,  221 

"Aiglon,  LV  15,  36,  139, 
181,  197,  206;  its  hero,  31, 
32,  35,  51,  197 

**  Alladine     et      Palamides," 

165,  221 
Alladine,  168 

Alma  in  "  Die  Ehre,"  66,  67, 

76 
•*  Amazons,  The,"  215 
"Ambassador,  The,"  90,  99 
Annunzio,  D',  7,  189 
Anna    Mahr,    in    "  Einsame 

Menschen,"  39,  57 
Antoine,  M.,  208 
"  Antony     and     Cleopatra," 

103 
"Ariane    et    Barbe    Bleue," 

166,  168,  222 
Ariane,  166,  167,  171 

225 


Arielle  in  "Joyzelle,"  170 
Arimanes  in  "  Manfred,"  136 
Aristotle,  180,  199,  200,  202 
"Arme   Heinrich,   Der,"  58, 

209 
"Arms  and  the  Man,"  106- 

109,  117,  218 
Artagnan,  D',  22,  23,  24,  26 
Arthur,  King,  36 
Astarte  in  "Manfred,"  136, 

138 
"Aveugles,    Les,"   159,    162, 

221 

Balzac,  23,  117 

Beate  in  "Es  lebe  das  Le^ 

ben,"  78,  81 
Belasco,  Mr.  David,  15 
Bellang^re  in  "La  Mort  de 

Tintagiles,"  168 
"  Benefit  of  the  Doubt,  The," 

216 
Bernard    Shaw,    see    Shaw, 

George  Bernard 
Bernhardt,  Mme.   Sarah,  10, 

35,  155,  206;  in  "  Magda," 

70,  71 ;  as  M^lissande,  205 ; 

as  Photine,  205 
Bertrand   in   "La   Princesse 

Lointaine,"  19 


£26 


INDEX 


"Biberpelz,  Das,"  40,  208 

Blake,  symbolism  of,  55 

Boehme,  154 

Booth,  Edwin,  140 

Boswell,  13 

"  Boys  and  Girls,"  213 

Brand,  55 

Browning,    Robert,    36,    127, 

142,  143,  144,  197 
Bulthaupt  on  Graf  Trast,  67 
Burgess,  Mr.,  in  "  Candida," 

110 
Burgoyne,     Gen.,    in    "  The 

Devil's  Disciple,"  118 
Byron,  23,  144;  and  Rome, 

81;  his  plays,  127 

«  Cabinet  Minister,  The,"  215 

"Caesar  and  Cleopatra,"  219 

Caesar,  118 

Camille,  195 

CampbeU,  Mrs.  Patrick,  as 
Magda,  70;  in  "  Pelleas  et 
Melisande,"  164;  in  "The 
Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray," 
216 

"Candida,"  9,  109-116,  118, 
124,  181,  189,  218 

Candida,  111,  117 

"  Captain  Brassbound*s  Con- 
version," 219 

Carlyle,  113,  154 

Chateaubriand,  2 

Cleopatra  in  "Caesar  and 
Cleopatra,"  118 

"Comedie  Humaine,"  23 

Coleridge,  127 

"  College  Crampton,"  41,  208 


"  Coriolanus,"  43 

Courtney,  Mr.  W.  L.,  176, 177 

Craigie,    Mrs.,   90;    and    Pi- 

nero,  99,  100 
Criticism,  standards  of,  1-3; 

theatrical,  6,  8;  current,  7; 

dramatic,  8 
Croker,  in  "  Iris,"  96 
Crosbie,  Mrs.,  in  "  Letty,"  87 
"  Cyrano   de   Bergerac,"   15, 

21,  22,  26,  30,  36,  56,  181, 

183,  196,  205 
Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  26,  35, 

51,   193,  265;  significance, 

22-29 

"  Daisy's  Escape,"  212 

Daly,  Augustin,  85 

Daly,  Arnold,  alluded  to,  102 

"  Dandy  Dick,"  214 

Dangers,  Lord,  in  "The 
Profligate,"  87 

"  Dawn,  The,"  46 

Deaconess  in  "  Hanneles 
Himmelfahrt,"  46 

"Devil's  Disciple,  The,"  219 

Dickens,  23;  in  "A  Tale  of 
Two  Cities,"  47 

"  Doll's  House,  A,"  193 

Don  Quixote,  33 

"Doom  of  Devorgoil,  The," 
127 

"  Double  Garden,  The,"  172 

Drama,  personal  character  of 
the,  3;  effects  of,  9,  10; 
power  to  present  ideas,  122, 
123;  poetic,  126;  Eliza- 
bethan,  127,   142,   181;   of 


INDEX  227 

the  19th  century,  127;  ex-  "Florian  Geyer,"  46,  47,  Q09 

tempore,    14;   classic,   142,  Fiske,  Mrs.,  in  "  Magda,"  70> 

181;     French,     142,     181;  71 

Chinese,     142;     Japanese,  Fitch,  Mr.  Clyde,  7,  15 

142  "  Forbidden  Fruit,"  213 

Dramatic  figures,  10,  35,  39,  Fox,  George,  153 

43,  44,  51,  175  France,  Anatole,  3,  4 

Dramatic  moments,  35,  138,  Francesca,  145 

139,  140  "  Frau  Sorge,"  74 

Dramatic  poetry,  142-144  Freie  Buhne,  Die,  207,  208 

"  Drei  Reihefeder,  Die,"  211  "  Friedensfest,  Das,"  39,  20T 

Dumas,  Alexandre,  22  "  Fritzchen,"  211 

Dumas,    Alexandre,   fils,   23,  "Fuhrmann    Henschel,"    56, 

90,  195  57,  209 

Duse,  Signora,  in  "  Magda,"  Fulda,  Ludwig,  206 

70,  71 

"Gay  Lord  Quex,  The,"  95, 

Ebbsmith,  Mrs.,  195  216 

Eckhard,  154  "  Genossin,  Die,"  216 

**  Ehre,  Die,"  66,  71,  76,  95,  George  Eliot,  23 

210  George  Sand,  22 

«  Einakter,  Drei,"  211  "  Ghosts,"  97 

"  Einsame  Menschen,"  39,  207  "  Giaconda,"  189 

Eliot,  George,  23  Globe  Theatre,  132 

"Elizabethan    drama,"    127,  Gloria  in   "You  Never  Can 

142,  181  Tell,"  109 

Emerson,  154,  202  "  Gluck  im  Winkel,  Das,"  210 

"  Es    lebe   das    Leben,"    78,  Gottwald  in  "  Hanneles  Him- 

181,  211  melfahrt,"  46 

"  Ewigmannliche,  Das,"  211  Guido   in   "Monna   Vanna,"^ 

169,  170 

Falstaif,  35  Guise,  Duke  of,  156,  159^ 

"  Fantastics,  The,"  205  Gulliver,  114 

Farce,  14  «  Guv'nor,  The,"  213 
Faust,  33 

Ferdinand    in    "  The    Tem-  Halbe,  Max,  39,  75 

pest,"  35  "  Hamlet,"  63,  94,  125,  140, 

Flaubert,  23  185,  198 


INDEX 


Hamlet,  31,  33,  133,  156 

Hannele,  44 

^"Hanneles  Himmelf ahrt," 

44-47,  60,  208 
Hare,  Mr.  John,  212,  216 
Hartmann  von  Aue,  58 
"  Haubenlerclre,  Die,"  66 
Hauptmann,  Gerhardt. 
His  becoming  known,  37; 
•earlier  influences,  39,  40; 
a  realist,  39,  43;  Protean 
character,  41;  an  individu- 
alist, 57,  58,  75,  79;  sym- 
bolism in,  55 ;  "  Vor  Son- 
nenaufgang,"  38,  39,  207; 
"  Das  Friedensfest,"  39, 
207;  "Einsame  Menschen," 
39,  207;  "Die  Weber,"  40, 
208;  "Das  Biberpelz,"  40, 
208;  "College  Crampton," 
41,  208;  "Hanneles  Him- 
melfahrt,"  44-47,  60,  208; 
""Florian  Geyer,"  46,  47, 
508;  *  "Die  versunkene 
Glocke,"  47-55,  188,  189, 
208;  '"Furhmann  Hen- 
schel,"  56,  209;  "  Schluck 
imd  Jau,"  56,  209;  "Mi- 
chael Kramer,"  57,  209; 
"Der  rote  Hahn,"  57,  209; 
"Der  arme  Heinrich,"  58, 
59,  209;  "  Rose  Bernd,"  57, 
209;  and  Rostand,  43;  and 
Sudermann,  39,  69,  63,  70, 
75;  and  Bernard  Shaw, 
121;  and  Maeterlinck,  162; 
plays,  207-209 
Hawthorne,  32,  173 


Hazlitt,  3,  130,  139 
HefFterdingt,      Pastor,      ia 

"Heimat,"  71,  77 
"Heimat,"    70,    71,    77,    189, 

210 
Heinrich  in  "  Die  versunkene 

Glocke,"    50-52,  53,  60,  61, 

188 
Heinrich  von  Aue  in  "Der 

arme  Heinrich,"  58,  59 
"  Helden,"  218 
"  Henry  V.,"  183 
Herder,  2 
Heredia,  139 
"  Hernani,"  22,  26 
"Herod,"  86,   126,  134,  140, 

144,  220 
"Hester's  Mystery,"  212 
"  Hobby  Horse,  The,"  214 
Holmes,  135 
Homer,  180 
"  Honour,"  210 
Hosea,  4 

"  How  He  Lied  to  Her  Hus- 
band," 219 
Howells,  extract  from  "The 

Story  of  a  Play,"  83 

Ibsen,  7,  39,  44,  92,  95,  105, 

176,  193 
Idas  in  "  Marpessa,"  140 
"Imprudence,"  213 
Individualism,  79 
"  Interieur,"  166,  221 
"Intrus,  L',"   159,  161,  162, 

166,  221 
"  Iris,"  89,  95,  96,  194,  217 
Iris,  89,  97,  194 


INDEX 


^29 


Irving    Place    Theatre,    48, 

205,  207,  209 
Isaiah,  4 
Ivanhoe,  26 

Job,  33 

"Johannes,"  211 

"  Johannisfeuer,"  211 

"John  BuU's  Other  Island," 

219 
John  Oliver  Hobbes,  90 
Jones,  H.  A.,  84,  98 
"  JoyzeUe,"  170-172,  222 
Joyzelle,  171,  172 
Judith,  172 
Juliet  17,  34,  191 

Kahn,  M.  Gustave,  14,  15 
Kane,  Archibald,  in  "  Iris," 

96 
Katharsis,  200 
Keats,      quoted,      34,      165; 

opinions,  50,   180;  drama, 

127 
Kendal,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  212, 

215 
"  King  Lear,"  130 
Kipling,  108 
Klopstock,  91 

"Lady  Bountiful,"  215 

Lamb,  130 

Landscape,  5 

Lear,  34 

Leonora  in  "Die  Ehre,"  76 

Lessing,  91 

"Letty,"  87,  95,  96,  97,  217 

Letty,  88 


Letchmere  in  "  Letty,"  87-89 

Literary  plays,  90 

"  Lonely  Lives,"  207 

Lord  Chamberlain's  Men,  132 

Lord  Quex,  95 

"  Lords  and  Commons,"  213 

"  Low  Water,"  213 

Lowell,  135 

Ludicrous,  the,  192 

Macaulay,  13 

"  Macbeth,"  94 

Macready,  143 

"  Madame  Bovary,"  23 

Maeterlinck,  Maubice.  In- 
troduction to  the  world  of 
letters,  147;  early  dialogue, 
148;  early  manner,  150, 
151;  philosophy,  152-155; 
earlier  dramatic  theory, 
155-158;  application  in 
earlier  plays,  159,  160; 
symbolism,  165,  173,  174; 
fundamental  idea,  171 ; 
"  La  Princesse  Maleine," 
159,  160,  161,  221;  quoted, 
148,  149;  "L'Intrus,"  159, 
161,  166,  221;  "  Les  Aveu- 
gles,"  159,  160,  221;  "Les 
Sept  Princesses,"  159,  160, 
161,  221;  "  Pell^as  et  M61i- 
sande,"  161-165,  221;  "  Al- 
ladine  et  Palamides,"  165, 
221;  "Aglavaine  et  S^ly- 
sette,"  165,  221;  "  In- 
terieur,"  166,  221;  "La 
Mort  de  Tintagiles,"  47, 
165,     221;     "Soeur     Bea- 


230 


INDEX 


trice,"  166,  225;  "  Ariane  et  Marie  in  "  Heimat,"  73 

Barbe  Bleue,"  166-168,  222;  Marius,  155,  159 

"  Monna  Vanna,"  168-170,  "  Marpessa,"  quoted,  141 

224;  "  JoyzeUe,"  170,  171,  Marpessa,  140 

922;      "Le      Tr^sor      des  Matthews,    Brander,    quota- 
Humbles,"    152,   153,   154;  tion  from,  35,  92,  183 


"Les  Abeilles,"  174;  "The 
Double  Garden,"  172;  and 
Rostand,  162;  and  Haupt- 
mann,  162;  and  Stephen 
Phillips,  162;  plays,  221, 
222 

"Magda,"  70,  210.  See 
"Heimat" 

Magda  in  "Heimat,"  70-73, 
210 ;  and  Anna  Mahr,  39 


"  Mauprat,"  23 
Melisande,  168 
M^lissande  in  "  La  Princess© 

Lointaine,"  19,  20,  205 
Melodrama,  14 
Merlin   in    "Joyzelle,;"   170, 

171 
Metchnikoff,  187 
Metternich    in    "  L'Aiglon," 

32 


"Magistrate,   The,"   91,   213,      "Michael   Kramer,"   57,   209 

"  Midsummer  Night's  Dream, 
A,"  130 


214 
Maldonado  in  "  Iris,"  89,  96 


"Man  and  Superman,"  109,     Miranda  in  "The  Tempest," 

117-120,  124,  219  35 

"  Man  and  His  Picture,  The,"     Mirbeau,  M.  Octave,  147 


210 


'  Monna     Vanna,"     168-170, 


"  Man  of  Destiny,  The,"  218         222 

"  Man  with  the  Glove,  The,"     "  Monte  Cristo,"  23 

139 
"  Manfred,"  55,  136-138 
Mandeville,  Mr.,  in  "  Letty," 

88 
Mansfield,  Mr.  Richard,  206, 

218 


"Money  Spinner,"  212 

Moliere,  41,  44,  91 

Morell,  Rev.  James  in  "  Can- 
dida," 109-111,  114,  116, 
123 

Morelli,  2 


Marchbanks    in    "  Candida,"      "  Morituri,"  211 


111-113,  114,  115,  189 
Marco  in  "Monna  Vanna," 

168-170 
Marguerite  Gautier  in  "La 


Morris,  Miss  Clara,  quoted, 

85 
"  Mort  de  Tintagiles,  La,"  47, 

165,  221 


Dame   aux  Camelias,"  23,     "  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession," 


195 


106,  123,  218 


INDEX 


231 


"  Mutter  Erde,"  39 
Mystics,  153-155 

Naturalists,  19 
Naturalismus,   62 
Newcome,  Colonel,  33 
Neo-realism,  117 
"  Nero,"  920 
Nickelmann,    The,    in    "Die 

versunkene     Glocke,"     48, 

189 
Nietzsche,  105 
Nordau,  Max,  148 
*'  Notorious   Mrs.    Ebbsmith, 

The,"  93,  216 
Novalis,  152 

OtheUo,  156 

"Paolo  and  Francesca,"  144, 
145,  290 

Pantomime,  14 

"  Paracelsus,"  142 

Pastor  in  "  Die  versunkene 
Glocke,"  52 

Pater,  Walter,  3 

"Pauline,"  142 

"P^U^as  et  Melisande,"  161- 
164,  165,  171,  181,  221 

Pelleas,  172 

Percinet  in  "Les  Roman- 
esques," 17-19 

"  Philanderers,  The,"  105, 
118,  218 

Phillips,  Stephen,  126, 
127,  134,  145;  and  the 
poetic  drama,  126-128, 
134-136;  his  language,  141; 
"  Herod,"  86,  126, 134, 140, 


290;  "Ulysses,"  130,  220; 
"  Paolo  and  Francesca," 
144,  145,  220;  "The  Sin 
of  David,"  220;  "Nero," 
220;  "Marpessa,"  141; 
plays,  220 

"  Philoctetes,"  136 

Phosphorus,  202 

Photine  in  "La  Samari- 
taine,"  205 

Piers  the  Ploughman,  114 

"Pilgrim's  Progress,  The," 
200 

PiNEEO,  Arthur  Wing. 
Stagecraft,  83-87;  dra- 
matic art,  87-89;  literary 
character,  89-91 ;  specific 
genre,  91 ;  so-called  "  prob- 
lem plays,"  92-95,  183, 
194;  a  dramatist,  98;  an 
actor,  913;  "Two  Hun- 
dred a  Year,"  219; 
"Daisy's  Escape,"  912; 
"Hester's  Mystery,"  212; 
"Bygones,"  212;  "The 
Money  Spinner,"  912 ; 
"Imprudence,"  213;  "The 
Squire,"  213;  "The  Rec- 
tor," 213;  "Boys  and 
Girls," 213;  "The  Rocket," 
213;  "Lords  and  Com- 
mons," 213;  "Low  Water," 
213;  "The  Weaker  Sex," 
213,  914 ;  "  The  Magistrate," 
91,  913;  "The  Schoolmis- 
tress," 914;  "The  Hobby 
Horse,"  914;  "Dandy 
Dick,"  914;  "  Sweet  Laven- 


INDEX 


der,"  91,  214;  "  The  Profli- 
gate," 87,  93,  214;  "The 
Cabinet  Minister,"  215 ; 
"Lady  Bountiful,"  215; 
"The  Times,"  215;  "The 
Amazons,"  215;  "The  Sec- 
ond Mrs.  Tanqueray,"  91, 
93,  215;  "The  Notorious 
Mrs.  Ebbsmith,"  93,  216; 
"  The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt," 
216;  "The  Princess  and  the 
Butterfly,"  99,  216;  "  Tre- 
lawney  of  the  Wells,"  216; 
"  The  Gay  Lord  Quex,"  95, 
216;  "Iris,"  89,  95,  96,  97, 
194,  217;  "Letty,"  87,  95, 
96,  97,  217;  "  A  Wife  with- 
out a  Smile,"  217;  and 
Robertson,  98,  99;  and 
Mrs.  Craigie,  99;  and 
Bernard  Shaw,  120;  plays, 
212-217 

Playgoing,  effects  of,  3,  4,  9 

"Plays,  Pleasant  and  Un- 
pleasant," 219 

"  Plays  for  Puritans,  Three," 
219 

Plotinus,  153 

Poe,  180 

Poetry,  in  public,  135 ;  on  the 
stage,  133,  134 

Pope,  10,  200 

Preese,  Janet,  in  "  The  Prof- 
ligate," 87 

"Princess  and  the  Butter- 
fly, The,"  99,  216 

"  Princesse  Lointaine,  La," 
19,  196,  205 


"  Princesse  Maleine,  La,"  148, 

159,  160,  161,  221 
Problem    plays,    92-95,    194, 

195 
"Profligate,    The,"    87,    99, 

214 
"  Prometheus    Bound,"    185, 

198 
Prossy,  Miss,  in  "Candida,'* 

9,  116 

Raina    in    "Arms    and    the 

Man,"  107 
Rautendelein    in    "  Die    ver- 

sunkene  Glocke,"  49,  50,  5S 
Ravenswood,  Master  of,  26 
Realism,  25 
Realismus,  62 

Realists,  19;  mode  of  pres- 
entation, 42 
Reaumer,  174 
"  Rector,  The,"  213 
Reichstadt,  Due  de,  32,  197 
Rembrandt,  139 
"  Remorse,"  127 
Renshaw,  Dunstan,  in  "The 

Profligate,"  87 
Robert   in   "Die   Ehre,"   66, 

67,  69,  76 
Robertson    and    Pinero,    98, 

99 
"  Rocket,  The,"  213 
Rougon-Macquart  Family,  23 
Romance,  18,  26 
"  Romanesques,  Les,"  16,  17 
Romanticists,    32;    mode    of 

presentation,  43 
Romeo,  17,  191 


INDEX 


« Romeo  and  Juliet,"  12^» 
129,  191 

«  Rose  Bernd,"  57,  209 

Rostand,  Edmond.  Re- 
ception into  the  Academy, 
12;  position  in  literature, 
13;  mode  of  presenting 
truth,  19;  success  in  ro- 
manticism, 25 ;  so-called 
pessimism,  29,  33;  kind  of 
romanticism,  32 ;  content 
with  dramatic  effect,  35; 
no  problems,  35,  92,  183; 
no  criticism  of  life,  35,  92, 
183;  idea  of  tragedy,  196, 
197;  "Les  Romanesques," 
16-18,  205;  "La  Princesse 
Lointaine,"  19-21,  196,  205; 
"  La  Samaritaine,"  21,  205 ; 
"  Cyrano  de  Bergerac,"  22- 
30,  196,  205;  "L'Aiglon," 
30-32,  197,  206;  and  Haupt- 
mann,  37,  43,  51;  and 
Sudermann,  65,  81;  an^ 
Bernard  Shaw,  121;  arm 
Maeterlinck,  47,  162;  plays, 
205,  206 

**  Rote  Hahn,  Der,"  209 

Roxane  in  "  Cyrano  de  Ber- 
gerac," 29 

Rudel  in  "La  Princesse 
Lointaine,"  19,  35,  51,  196 

Ruskin,  3,  4 

Ruysbroeck,  154 

Sainte-Beuve,  2 

"  Samaritaine,  La,"  21,  205 

Sand,  George,  22 


Sardanapaltis^  127 

Sartorius,  M.,  in  "Wid* 
owers'  Houses,"  123 

"  Schlachtenlenker,  Der,"  219 

"Schluck  und  Jau,"  57,  209 

"  Schmetterlingsschlacht^ 
Die,"  211 

"  School,"  99 

"  Schoolmistress,  The*"  214 

Schwartze,  Lieutenant  Col- 
onel, in  "Heimat,"  72,  81 

Scott,  18,  23,  127 

"  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray, 
The,"  91,  93,  176,  181,  215, 
216 

Selysette,  168 

"  Sept  Princesses,  Les,"  159,. 
160,  161,  221 

Shakespeare,  2,  4,  29,  31,  44, 
85,  102,  103,  128,  131,  132, 
136,  147,  180,  184 

Shandy,  Mr.,  193 

Sharpe,  Mr.  William,  151 

3haw,  George  Bernard. 
~^^  Stagecraft,  102 ;  ideas,. 
104;  how  presented,  122, 
124;  realism,  108;  neo*» 
realism,  117;  realistic  bril- 
liancy, 120,  121;  "Wid- 
owers' Houses,"  105,  123, 
218;  "The  Philanderers," 
106,  118,  218;  "Mrs.  War- 
ren's Profession,"  106,  123,. 
218;  "  Arms  and  the  Man," 
106,  108,  218;  "You 
Never  Can  Tell,"  109,  118, 
229;  "Candida,"  109-116, 
218;   "The   Man   of'Des- 


INDEX 


tiny,"  218;  "The  Devirs 
Disciple,"  219 ;  "  Caesar  and 
Cleopatra,"  219;  "Captain 
Brassbound's  Conversion," 
519;  "  Man  and  Superman," 
109,  117-120,  124,  219; 
"How  He  Lied  to  Her 
Husband,"  219;  "John 
Bull's  Other  Island,"  219; 
and  Rostand,  121;  and 
Hauptmann,  121 ;  and 
Sudermann,  121;  and  Pi- 
nero,  120;  and  Shake- 
speare, 102;  plays,  218, 
219 

Shelley,  127 

Sheridan,  91,  127 

**  Sin  of  David,  The,"  220 

**Sistine  Madonna,"  180 

"  Sodom's  Ende,"  68,  71,  76, 
95,  97,  139,  210 

"  Soeur  Beatrice,"  166,  222 

Sophocles,  2 

"  Sordello,"  143 

Sorismonde  in  "  La  Princesse 
Lointaine,"  19,  20 

Sothern,  Mr.  Edward,  48, 
191,  209 

Spielhagen,  38 

Squarciafico  in  "  La  Princesse 
Lointaine,"  20 

"Squire,  The,"  213 

Stage,  The,  a  public  place, 
100;  of  Shakespeare,  103 

Stagecraft,  83-86,  102,  103 

Stage  Society,  The,  218 

Stael,  Mme.  de,  2 

Stevenson,  23,  26,  42 


"Strafford,"  143 

Straker,  'Enery,  in  "Man 
and  Superman,"  123 

Strindberg,  7 

"Story  of  a  Play,  The," 
quoted,  83 

"  Sturmgeselle  SokrateSy 

Der,"  211 

Sudermann,  Heinrich. 
General  critical  opinion  on, 
62;  general  character,  63; 
a  personal  writer,  64;  his 
motives,  65 ;  his  "  dramatic 
theme,"  75;  no  especial  in- 
dividualist, 79;  impression 
of  his  power,  80,  81 ;  "  Die 
Ehre,"  66-68,  71,  76,  95, 
210;  "Sodom's  Ende," 
68-70,  71,  76,  95,  97,  210; 
"Heimat,"  70,  73,  77,  95, 
210;  "Die  Schmetterlings- 
schlacht,  211;  "Das  Gluck 
im  Winkel,"  211;  "  Mori- 
turi,"  211;  "Teja,"  211; 
"Fritzchen,"  211;  "Das 
Ewig  Mannliche,"  211 ; 
"Johannes,"  211;  "Die 
Drei  Reihefeder,"  211; 
"  Johannisfeuer,"  211 ;  "  Es 
lebe  das  Leben,"  71,  78, 
211 ;  "  Der  Sturmgeselle 
Sokrates,"  64,  211;  "Frau 
Sorge,"  74;  and  Haupt- 
mann, 39,  62,  63,  70,  75; 
and  Wildenbruch,  62;  and 
Bernard  Shaw,  121;  plays, 
210,  211 

"Sweet  Lavender,"  91,  214 


INDEX 


Swinburne,  127 

Sylvette  in  "Les  Roman- 
esques," 17-19 

Symbolism,  nature  of,  55;  in 
"Die  versunkene  Glocke," 
50,  56;  of  Blake,  55;  of 
Maeterlinck,  159,  173,  174 

Taine,  2 

"Tale  of  Two  Cities,  The," 
47 

Tanqueray,  Mrs.,  9,  195 

Tate,  Nahum,  35 

"  Teja,"  211 

Tennyson,  36,  143,  144,  197; 
his  plays,  127 

Teufelsdroeckh,  29,  114 

«  Teufelskerl,  Ein,"  219 

Thackeray,  23,  113,  117 

Theatre,  French,  135 

Theatrical  criticism,  6,  8 

Tolstoi,  38,  39,  41 

"  Three  Musketeers,  The," 
23 

"  Times,  The,"  215 

"  Tisserands,  Les,"  208 

Tragedy.  The  great  thing  in 
literature,  33-35,  180;  Mr. 
Courtney  on,  176;  Words- 
worth on,  177;  Aristotle  on, 
199;  simplest  notion  of, 
186;  range  of,  188;  its  true 
character,  188-190,  198;  ef- 
fect of,  200-202;  in  love, 
191;  of  Browning,  178;  of 
Rostand,  196;  of  Pinero, 
194;  in  "Die  versunkene 
Glocke,"  188 


Tragic  figures,  34,  81 
Trast,  Graf,  in  "  Die  Ehre,'* 

67,  76,  124 
Tree,  Mr.  Beerbohm,  86,  12^, 

134,  140 
"Trelawney   of   the  Wells," 

216 
Trench,    in    "Widowers' 

Houses,"  123 
Trenwith  in  "  Iris,"  95 
"  Tristan  und  Isolde,"  139 
TroUope,  Anthony,  26^ 
"Two    Hundred    a    Year," 

212 

«  Ulysses,"  130,  144,  220 
Uncle  Toby,  My,  193 

Valentine!,    in   "You    Never 

Can  Tell,"  109 
Vanna,  Monna,  169,  170, 171, 

172 
Verhaeren,  46 
"  Versunkene   Glocke,    Die," 

9,    46,    47,    56,    181,    208 
Vivien    in    "Mrs.    Warren's 

Profession,"  123 
Voltaire,  91 
"  Vor    Sonnenauf gang,"    38, 

207 

Wagner,  105 

"Weaker    Sex,    The,"    213, 

214 
Weber  and  Fields  burlesque, 

14 
"  Weber,  Die,"  40,  58,  208 
Weyman,  Stanley,  25 


236  INDEX 

Whistler,  42  Wyndham,    Mr.     (now    Sir 

«V/idowers'     Houses,"     105,  Charles),  206 

123,  218 

Wilderbruch,  62,  63,  66  Yeats,  Mr.  W.  B.,  7 

Willy  Janikow  in  "  Sodom's  Ygraine    in    "  La    Mort    de 

Ende,"  69,  77,  81  Tintagiles,"  166,  168 

Winter,  Mr.  William,  214  "  You  Never  Can  Tell,"  109, 

Wittich  in  "  Die  versunkene  118,  219 

Glocke,"  49 

Wordsworth,  127,  177  Zenobia,  174 

"  Wife  without  a  Smile,  A,"  Zimmermann,  Dr.,  40 

217  Zola,  20,  23,  38,  39,  41 


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